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In the early spring of 1987 the baseball prophets who tell the country which teams will play in the World Series looked into the bottom of their cups and found no trace of the Minnesota Twins in their tea leaves.

Two months later they were lamenting the dismal state of the Minnesota Twins' relief pitching, and a month after that they were explaining why it was impossible for a team to win the pennant if it couldn't win more than 40 percent of its games on the road. But in the gloaming of an October day in Detroit the Twins won on the road, for the second time in 24 hours, and five hours later they walked into the Metrodome in Minneapolis, where more than 50,000 people spontaneously assembled to bring to this extraordinary baseball team the tumultuous sound and gratitude of its public. There have been public receptions for winning baseball teams before. But this one was astonishing because it was impulsive and seemed to tap an emotion deeper than the gloats of triumph. It seemed to recognize that here was a group of athletes who had been derided as a baseball cartoon just a few years ago, depicted as a mathematical fluke just a few months before, and made up a lot or ordinary human beings apart from the Pucketts, Hrbeks, Gaettis, Brunanskys and Violas.

But they had become champions because they accepted one of the oldest creeds in athletics, and living: Personal glory is exciting but winning together is bigger and exciting. There have been greater baseball teams than the 1987 Minnesota Twins, but not many that played less selfishly. It explained why 50,000 people came to the Metrodome on an October night to call them champion.

Jim Klobuchar