When I was five, I wanted to be a major league baseball player. In particular, I wanted to be Cookie Rojas. But Cookie Rojas played second base, and any fool could tell you that left-handed kids don't play anywhere on the infield except for first base. So then I decided I wanted to be John Mayberry.

I lived in Salina, Kan., back then, and my team was the Kansas City Royals. A year later, in 1976, I lived in Lawrence, Kan., and the Royals won the American League Western Division title for the first time. They promptly lost to the Yankees in the playoffs (back then, baseball's post season was much simpler). Oh well, said philosophers aged six to a hundred six, there's always next year.

Yes and no. 1977 and 1978 bought further playoff humiliation from the Yankees. After 1979's second-place finish, in 1980 the Royals won the division for the fourth time in five years and once again faced the Yankees for the right to get to the World Series.

George Brett whacked a three-run homer off Goose Gossage--likely the biggest single hit in the history of the franchise--to seal a 4-2 win and a three-game sweep of the hated Bronx Bombers. The Royals finally had made it to the World Series. Willie Mays Aikens hit two home runs each in two of the games (one of the greatest World Series feats ever), but the Philadelphia Phillies still managed to beat the Royals four games to two.

I still remember the parade Kansas City threw for its fallen heroes. Some idiot had the idea of putting the players on horses. Never mind that many Royals had never ridden before or, in the case of George Brett, were so inebriated as to be incapable of balancing on the back of anything less stable than a gurney. After a somewhat shaky procession (oft-interrupted by players abandoning their horses for the comfort of convertibles), the team stood on a makeshift stage at Liberty Memorial thanking the fans for their support and making rash promises for the future.

On every other day of my childhood, my parents held that the only excuse for missing a single minute of school was hospitalization. But I skipped school that day and stood there (with my dad and maybe my mom, too) at Liberty Memorial. I heard the shaky speeches and cheered along with the thousands of fans who packed the park.

For me, the day after that loss was better than the day after the end of the 1985 World Series, which the Royals won. Maybe it was because I was living in New Mexico in 1985. Maybe it was because my parents made me go to a Boy Scout meeting on the evening of game six (the game Cardinals fans still bitch about because of a bad call at first base). Maybe it was the anti-climactic 11-0 win in game seven. I dunno.

This June, the Carolina Hurricanes made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals. They knocked off the New Jersey Devils, the Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs (one recent NHL champ and two legendary NHL franchises) along the way. After winning game one, the Canes lost four straight to Detroit and headed to the showers as the Red Wings skated with the storied Cup.

But those final losses hardly tarnished the season. Before moving to North Carolina four years ago, the Hurricanes were known as the Hartford Whalers. In almost 20 years in Hartford as an NHL franchise, the team managed to win just one playoff series. In 2002, the boys won three. They did it with a team of hard-working youngsters and even harder-working veterans. Captain Ron Francis stands second in NHL career assists and among the top five in NHL career goals (stats that make him an almost certain early-entry member of the Hall of Fame), and yet he's hardly well-known among average hockey fans. That's okay with him.

Being underestimated every stretch of the way was fine with the rest of the Canes as well. Time after time, they defeated daunting circumstances. The defining moment of the playoff run came in game four of the second-round series with Montreal. The Canadiens had won two of the first three games, and they led 3-0 on home ice with about 15 minutes left in the game. The Canes scored three goals on NHL MVP Jose Theodore before winning the game in overtime. Stunning doesn't even begin to describe the scene.

Meanwhile, over in South Korea, the United States men's soccer team was putting together a nice streak of its own. It whacked Portugal in the first game, tied the host Koreans in the second and snuck into the second round after losing to Poland in the third match.

A spirited win over Mexico led to a match with Germany in the World Cup quarterfinals. The U.S. had never been so far in the "modern" era, and some fans were worried that our boys would be tense and not play well.

Instead, they made us proud. The Americans outplayed one of the most storied sides in soccer, though Germany still eked out a 1-0 win. No matter. For the first time in memory, a United States men's soccer team displayed offensive firepower in the World Cup and proved it could match up against the best in the world.

The Canes may never make the Stanley Cup Finals ever again. The United States may well improve upon this year's performance at the World Cup, though it's unlikely that we will make the tournament finals in 2006 or 2010 (a goal set by U.S. soccer officials many years ago). That's okay. Victories are wonderful whenever they arrive, but it's the unexpected ones that are the sweetest. And that slight ache that comes with just missing an astonishing apex is sometimes more delirium-inducing than actually watching your team win it all.

Of course, when you win the Stanley Cup, your name is engraved for eternity. And when you win the World Cup, you are acknowledged as the greatest sports heroes in the world. And when you win the World Series, you'll eventually get your name mentioned in a George Will column.

The losers? They fade into the back pages of statistics compendiums and sports histories. And burn themselves into the minds of young men and women who are rapidly becoming old women and men.

Which, when you think about it, is about as good a place to be as any.

Jon Worley still wants to be John Mayberry.