Baseball in the current era is in a way a museum piece. It is played on grass, just like the early days of the sport. However, the grass is grown in a climate-controlled clear-plastic dome. The uniforms are similar although made of the throw away material that is popular in this environmentally conscious era. Nobody these days ever wears a garment twice and most people rarely wear anything for more than a few hours.

There are only a handful of players that plays both in the field and in the hitting order. There are specialists for everything. The rosters are 60 players per team. Each team has designated hitters in the batting order. Each position in the field is taken by a player with great defensive skills, who never gets to the plate except in the rarest of circumstances.

What I want to write about is a throwback. He seemed like a hick kid. No pretensions, no guile, no real smarts; the kid just played baseball and played it well. The streak began on a non-eventful day. The kid went 1-3 against a journeyman pitcher from the Osaka Tigers and his team lost the game. In fact, it was a squib single. Meaningless really, late in the game with two out and no one on base.

The kid played both ways. I don't know why, but like I said, he was a throwback. A perfect blend of the elegant sweet-swinging hitter and a graceful outfielder with a cannon for an arm. His manager had an appreciation for the history of the game, because in his rookie year, the kid played in exactly 162 games. This was the old schedule length.

Baseball, being played year round as it is now, had a serious problem with record keeping. Almost all the old records had been broken and there was no bothering with asterisks, as in the time that Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth's single season home run record in the newer 162 game schedule as opposed to the 154 game schedule that Ruth played in.

Teams developed squads that played well in different parts of the world. Every four years the standings began to come together and teams from all over the world began to qualify for a true World Series. This is somewhat similar to the way soccer was organized in the days of the World Cup.

But, anyway, back to the kid. The next day, the kid went 3-4 with a home run. The team won a tough game in Malaysia. Late in the game, in the at bat following the home run, the kid got beaned by the eighth-inning specialist of the Malaysian team. The ball thumped off the kid's chest with a dull sound that I heard from the press box. He just popped right back up and trotted down to first without a glance at the pitcher. Never rubbed it once. Like I said, the kid is a throwback. There is hardly a prima donna in the 12 Major Leagues that would not have taken a chance to ride the bench and take an occasional whirlpool. I went down to the locker room myself and saw the ugly bruise on the kid's chest and wondered how he made that running catch in center field in the ninth inning, spun on a dime and nailed a perfect throw to second to double off an opposing player, who I am sure, didn't believe it either.

Two weeks later, in Australia, the kid laid down a bunt single and reached first. I checked my scorecards. The kid had a hit in 10 consecutive games at this point. I began to think about the one record left that still stood. Almost every single season or lifetime record had been smashed in this century. But there was one hitting record that still stood and, despite this era of designated hitters in every spot of the batting order, had never been challenged. This record was Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak.

The old National Record of Pete Rose of hitting in 44 consecutive games had not been challenged in years. I would say it was probably the travel that did it. No hitter can maintain that edge over a schedule that crossed time zones around the world. I made mention of the kid's streak in my article in the World Cyber-Times, but I figured the streak would no doubt end when the team moved onto the India and Southern Russia.

But I was wrong. The kid was on fire, hitting at a .430 clip and ripped through Southwest Asia and extended the streak to 23 games. People began to take notice. The team moved through their Middle Eastern swing and I thought the kid was in trouble when they played a double header in Iran. A double off the wall in the first game sent the streak to 31 games. After that opposing pitchers were taking it as a point of honor to handcuff the kid.

Late in the second game, the kid was 0-3 and there were runners on second and third. The pitcher seemed to swear an oath that the kid was not going to get a hit and brushed him back on the first pitch with a hard fast ball toward the head. I was pleased to use the expression "chin music" in the next day's article as I described the kid's bat flashing on the second offering and sending a rocket shot to dead center field that silenced the screaming crowd and must have broken that pitcher's neck as his head snapped back following the flight of the ball.

The team was due to return to the States and the thing that concerned me now was the distractions. The hype on the kid was getting immense. Women were breaking into his hotel rooms, he couldn't eat at restaurants anymore and the requests for interviews from the world wide press were in the hundreds. I got an interview with him because I was the regular beat reporter for the team and my article got syndicated in every newspaper in the world, carried word-for-word on every television station and set a new one-day access record in cyberspace. The whole interview could be summed up in the one word the kid kept repeating over and over, "shucks." This kid was such a throwback, he cracked me up.

Another thing was the kid was nursing several injuries that nagged at him physically. But, despite that, he was in center field every day.

The kid kept it up. Crossing America, he went 2-4 in Philadelphia and you would have thought the city would go crazy. The kid was 5-5 at Yankee Stadium and millions of fans world-wide rejoiced.

Soon it became apparent that the whole world was coming to a stop during every game the kid played. Hooked up by computer, watching on TV or at the game with a scalped ticket; the world held its breath until the kid extended his streak. The President of the United States was in the stands the day the kid passed Rose and was the holder of the second longest hitting streak in history.

In St. Louis, the world was nervous as the kid was 0-4 until the game went into extra innings and the kid, getting an extra at bat, hit a low liner down the third base line. Millions of eyes were on one lonely umpire who stared hard at the ball and with a deep breath called it foul. I knew the kid and watched as he stared down at the umpire. The papers were full of how the kid stared down that ump, but I knew it was respect that the kid had for the man. On the next pitch, the kid hit a ringing single right up the middle and that umpire joined millions in a world-wide exhalation of breath. The streak reached 55 games after game two of a three game series in San Francisco. Then on a Saturday afternoon, in front of a world-wide audience plus the entire populations of six space stations, the kid went 3-4 with two homers to tie Dimaggio's record.

It was just one man's achievement. But, it meant everything to the world. After the game the next day in Los Angeles, where the kid hit a solo home run to break the record that had been associated with the words "truly unbreakable," I tried to tell the kid what it meant for him to break that record. That, despite the artificial quality of the people's lives, despite the unnatural accommodations that modern life required, despite the cynical nature of existence on planet Earth, the kid had showed that the human spirit can still beat the odds.