The world series is worth the wait.(baseball player Mike Morgan)(Interview)

They were 17 years old, and one thing led to another, and they had a baby boy they named Mike. They dropped out of school. They got in the car, and they drove out of California across mountains and desert to Las Vegas.

They carried the boy in a five-gallon bucket and made him comfortable by surrounding him with sponges. A laugh here: "The first `car seat,'" Mike Morgan says.

Mike Morgan is baseball's human atlas. In his crinkly, smiling face is a map of the game. The Diamondbacks' relief pitcher has worked in four U.S. time zones, in Canada, on both coasts, from top to bottom, in the heartland, in the desert. He has worked for 22 professional teams, 12 in the major leagues; no other athlete in any sport has played for as many major league teams. Another laugh: "Have arm, will travel."

Such an arm it is, all but impervious to the erosion of muscle and tendon that comes to most human body parts. At age 42, Morgan is in his 21st big-league season. He's the only active player left over from the 1978 season; he's only the ninth pitcher to work in four decades, and he's only the fifth pitcher with more saves after age 40 than before. "This thing is rubber," he says, raising his right arm. "I'll pitch 'til I'm 50--the white Satchel Paige."

A starting pitcher until the last two seasons, Morgan has been so good for so long that he has lost a lot of games for middling teams. Seven seasons he won 10 games or more; 11 times he lost in double figures.

At 140-185, he leads active pitchers in defeats. He's now a set-up man, an eighth-inning specialist getting the game to the closer.

And now, a World Series. His first. "The only other time I played for a championship was 1981, in Double-A ball, in Nashville. We lost to Orlando and Frank Viola, 2-0. I got clipped with another of my `L' shutouts. But I tell you, this is different, this World Series. Back in Nashville, we didn't have all this media. I think we had one photographer, and he went to 7-Eleven and bought a disposable Kodak. This is the big time here."