Special Report: Past And Present

Lots has changed since our last World Championship. Women can vote now. And people of color can play professional baseball.

Where would we be without Manny and Pedro and David Ortiz?

There were no chopper shots of ballgames on TV, because there were no choppers, and no TV's. No computers either.

Adolph Hitler, still in his 20's, was almost killed in WW1. We didn't have the atom bomb either.

The stock market crash was 11 years off...

You couldn't crack open a can of cold beer until the mid-30's.

Fans relied on newspapers to hear about stars like the Babe...who, by the way, never had a curse, and if he did, we're not under his spell anymore, thank you very much.

Fenway existed and so did Cracker Jack, but you couldn't hit the ATM to pay for it...and you couldn't use a credit card because those weren't invented until 1950.

In 1918, millions died of the flu, and the average American lived to be only 39 because of that. Now, life expectancy is 77, and flu deaths are rare.

There were 103 million Americans back then -- 293 million now. No wonder it's hard to get a parking space.

So it's clear, as our friends from Nike pointed out during the games, we have waited and watched a long, long time. It's a good thing, we just did it.