Baseball: Bonds' Giants stride into World Series

Earlier than most people expected, the story lines for the climax of the 2002 baseball season are set. Will Barry Bonds, the finest hitter of his generation, finally get the World Series ring he craves? Or will the Anaheim Angels seal the revenge of Southern California suburbia, and win it all for the first time in the franchise's 42-year history?

The last but one piece in the play-off jig-saw fell into place on Sunday evening in San Francisco, when Bonds' Giants won the National League pennant with a 4-1 series win over those eternal bridesmaids of autumn, the St Louis Cardinals – and ensuring this year of the underdog culminates in the first all-wild-card Series.

With four post-season home runs already this year, Bonds has gone a long way towards disproving the theory that he chokes in games which really matter.

Game Five, however, must be counted a failure, even though, in a nerve jangling 2-1 victory, Bonds drove in the Giants' first run in the bottom of the eighth, which tied the game.

But Bonds should have done better, with the bases loaded and a fat fastball of the type he usually devours served up by the Cardinals starting pitcher, Matt Morris. Another day, the ball might have ended in San Francisco Bay for a grand slam home run. But Bonds could do no better than lift it on to the perimeter track for a long flyball out.

The Giants, however, would not be denied. In the bottom of the ninth, after David Bell and Shawn Dunston had delivered a pair of two-out singles, the veteran Kenny Lofton drilled a hit into right field, allowing Bell to score the winning run.

"Kenny had a tough couple of days and I thought of pinchhitting for him," Dusty Baker, the Giants' manager said. "But then I thought, that's crazy. And he got the base hit. These are a special bunch of guys."

The Cardinals, though, have fallen yet again at the penultimate stage – in a year when the early demise of the Yankees, the Atlanta Braves and the Oakland As seemed to play into their hands. This, too, was a World Series they wanted as no other, after the tragic death of their pitcher Darren Kile.

Throughout the post-season, every Cardinal has had DK, and Kile's number "57" embroidered on his cap.

Facing the Giants in Saturday's World Series opener will be the Anaheim Angels, in the first West Coast match-up since 1989. That Series is remembered not for Oakland's victory over the Giants, but for the massive earthquake which struck the Bay Area just before the start of Game Three.

Mother nature, it is profoundly to be hoped, will not interfere this time.

But an Anaheim victory would mean a seismic jolt for baseball's pecking order. The Angels may be owned by Disney, but they are notably short on stardust. They make up for it with a scrappiness and work ethic that puts aristocrats like the Yankees to shame.