Major League Baseball fans able to overlook the rampant greed of the sport’s owners, players, and sponsors, steroid scandals, night World Series games in November, obscene ticket prices, even more obscene player salaries and Scott Boras have much to celebrate about the recently completed World Series.

For one thing, it marked the first championship for the Giants in 56 years. They won their last one while playing their home games at Harlem’s legendary Polo Grounds, a ballpark that was demolished 46 years ago. With the possible exception of Clevelanders (62 years since their last World Series title) and Chicago Cub fans (102 years and counting), all true baseball aficionados outside the Lone Star State should be celebrating San Francisco’s triumph. And  the Giants won representing the National League, which to its credit still eschews the execrable designated hitter rule, an innovation adopted by the American League in 1973 that’s still far better suited for slow-pitch softball than it is for competitions that involve actual athletes.

Another reason to savor the Giants’ win: the disappointment it undoubtedly brought Texas Rangers rooters who inexplicably poured adoration on the team’s number one fan, a former part-owner of the club and more recently a writer of fanciful memoirs. This individual’s other accomplishments include nearly bankrupting the United States of America on behalf of some Machiavellian oligarchs who arranged for his installation as chief executive of the nation for a eight-year period that commenced on January 20, 2001.

But my personal reason for celebrating involves the Most Valuable Player of the 2010 World Series. Fifteen years ago Edgar Renteria and I were both rookie employees of the Portland Sea Dogs. He was a 19-year-old shortstop prospect; I was the radio play-by-play announcer.

At the welcoming dinner the evening before the season opener ticket-buying fans were treated to hot dogs, ice cream, and other ballpark delicacies, but the main attraction was a chance to sit and chat with a real live Sea Dog player. Eight people were assigned to each table; seven ticket buyers and one actual team member.

However, there was one potential logistical problem: two players spoke only Spanish. One was Dominican pitcher Antonio Alfonseca; the other was Renteria, a Colombian. Since I had spent a brief period in Central America nearly a decade earlier, I was nominated by those in charge to sit with one of the two young Latinos that night.

Since it was my first year with the team and the players had arrived from Florida only hours earlier I had no idea what any of them looked like. But when I got to my assigned table there wasn’t too much doubt about who Edgar Renteria was. Six people chatted amiably amongst themselves; a dark-skinned, athletic-looking young fellow sat with them, mutely and expressionlessly.

I approached the quiet young man. “Edgar?” I said. He responded wordlessly,  acknowledged my presence with a nod. Seizing upon his silence as a window of opportunity, I began reciting the fractured-Spanish soliloquy I had been practicing all afternoon.

Edgar: Yo soy Andres. Mi trabajo es con los Sea Dogs. Ocho años en el pasado yo viví en Guatemala con cuerpo de Paz, y en este vez yo hable un poquito de español, pero ahora yo no recuerdo mucho. Pero su necesitas ayuda, yo voy a tratar. (Very rough translation: “Edgar, I’m Andy. I work for the Sea Dogs. Eight years ago I was in the Peace Corps in Guatemala and spoke a little Spanish at that time. I’ve forgotten most of it, but if you need help I’ll try to assist you.”) Edgar listened impassively. When I finished he looked me in the eye and said, “Don’t worry, man. I speak English.”

Edgar didn’t need to say much that summer; his play spoke for him.

Near the end of the season he did a ten-minute pregame show interview with me in Binghamton, New York. It’s possible that no one besides he and I understood a word of it, but we both enjoyed it immensely.

By the following May Renteria was the Florida Marlins’ shortstop. The year after that he rapped out the game-winning single in the bottom of the 11th inning of the seventh game of the World Series. He was 21 years old at the time.

And thirteen years later he belted a series-clinching three-run home run off of one of the game’s elite pitchers, making him a World Series hero again, albeit one with slightly more flesh and a lot less hair than he sported as a summering Mainer 15 years ago.

Three days after being named World Series MVP Edgar was released by the Giants, although they did give him the $500,000 buyout his contract called for.

Now I remember why I haven’t been to a major league baseball game in nearly a decade.

— Andy Young teaches in Kennebunk, and lives in Cumberland.