The Giants won the pennant in 1962 in a playoff with the transplanted Dodgers, and everybody trekked to San Francisco, where it rained and it rained and it rained. Not 40 days and 40 nights, but long enough to delay the Series for three full days. In the days before credit cards and A.T.M.’s, baseball officials and fans and journalists were calling home for money to be wired by Western Union. I wasn’t there. I was back in the office at Newsday, getting updates from my colleagues about the meals and the wine and the music in picturesque corners of the city.