Fifty-five year-old Hack Stansky is convinced that 2001 will be "The Year It Finally Happened" for the Springfield Heroes, a baseball team who last won the World Series ninety-nine years ago. Sitting in historic Squiggley Field, euphorically awaiting the start of game seven of the series, Hack waxes nostalgic. He regales his son, Ernie, with the coming to America stories of Carlo Squigglini, the Italian immigrant who makes a fortune in the fast food business and becomes the owner of the Heroes, and his own grandfather, Avrum Stanskovich, who escapes the pogroms of Russia and becomes the first...