After I spent a few minutes wandering around the walk-in cooler with a forlorn look, the man behind the liquor counter at the Blue Springs Hy-Vee asked if I was looking for something in particular.

Why, yes, I explained, my research suggested that this very store was one of the closest spots to Columbia that sold Old Style beer, and I was on my way back from a long day at Kansas Speedway, a return trip whose soundtrack was static-filled snippets of Game 2 of the National League Championship Series dispatched from various distant AM radio stations, and I had veered off I-70 and arrived at his place of business on this autumn Sunday night, and, well, there was a problem.

�Old Style? Yeah, we�ve got that,� he replied, and led me back into the cooler, marching right to an empty patch of counter space. �Hmm. Must have just sold out. Why Old Style?�

I explained it was what my dad, Frank, drank. In fact, L&L General Store in my hometown of Trenton had stocked it only because it was what Frank drank. His happy place was the recliner, with an Old Style in hand and the Chicago Cubs on TV, Harry Caray making the best of another doomed season. And, I told this man, when I was of age, or maybe a little before I was of age, or, let�s be honest, a significant amount of time before I was of age � I think the statute of limitations has run out on that bit of laissez-faire parenting � I would fetch Frank beers from his special fridge in the basement and skim a little off the top, if you get my drift, and we would crack up as Harry tried to pronounce Doug Dascenzo�s name backward.

So, I told the man, I�m not sure if you�re a baseball fan, but the Cubs haven�t made the World Series since 1945, haven�t won the damn thing since 1908, but this year � this year they�re something special, and my dad has been dead for 15 years, and I haven�t had an Old Style in about that long, but it would really mean a lot to me if I could get my hands on enough of that beer to raise a toast after each postseason victory to those who never lived to see the Cubs win it all but never gave up hope.

I wanted to toast Ernie Banks, Ron Santo, Harry � he was a Bud man, I know, but he wouldn�t turn down a drink � and, of course, Frank.

The man nodded. There was a pause. I suppose I expected him to produce a case of Old Style from the secret stash kept on hand for sentimental requests.

�We have Hamm�s,� he suggested helpfully.

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I can, without the aid of Google � although I checked after the fact just to make sure � rattle off the most common batting order of the 1984 Chicago Cubs: Bobby Dernier and Ryne Sandberg (�The Daily Double,� as Harry called them), Gary �Sarge� Matthews, Leon �Bull� Durham, Keith �Zonk� Moreland, Ron �the Penguin� Cey, Jody Davis (�Jo-dy � Jo-dy Davis, King of Wrigley Field,� Harry sang to the tune of �The Ballad of Davy Crockett�) and Larry Bowa.

I have followed the Cubs since my dad took me to Wrigley Field in 1980. I saw the portly Rick Reuschel baffle the Dodgers with his sinker as the home team won 2-1 � a rarity in a season in which they finished last in the NL East with a 64-98 record. What I remembered most, as an impressionable young boy from rural Missouri, was being surrounded in the bleachers by degenerate city folk who were gambling on whether the next pitch would be a ball or a strike.

I was totally smitten.

At that point, Harry was broadcasting White Sox games. The Cubs play-by-play man was Jack Brickhouse, whose catchphrase, �Hey- Hey!� was used on the rare occasions that something good happened. In 1982, Harry took over as the play-by-play man on WGN, the Chicago-based superstation, and the party really started. He had entered the �crazy uncle� phase of his career, and his slurred stream-of-consciousness was just so different than the catatonic styles of the broadcasters of the Kansas City Royals � the team I should have been rooting for, geographically speaking � and the other superstation team of the 80s, the Atlanta Braves.

The Cubs, who played nothing but day games at home, were the perfect way to spend a summer afternoon when you were faithfully following the advice of your Little League coach, who banned swimming on the day of the game lest we wear ourselves out for an evening of standing around and watching dozens of four-pitch walks interspersed with bean balls and three-base errors.

Harry called the action for a few good Cubs teams, NL East champions in 1984 and �89, and a lot of bad ones before his death in 1998. But the nature of baseball � and memory � is that there are so many games, they run together and form an amalgam in my mind. I mostly remember it being the thing on TV while I was hanging out with my dad, the guy who taught me to play baseball and make smart-ass comments to the television.

And I kind of miss that.

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Cubs games are no longer televised nationwide, and if there is a new generation of fans outside of Chicago, it is probably a result of the kids of the 1980s procreating and passing down their sickness.

It�s hard to follow the team as close as I once did. But when the playoffs start and the Cubs are involved, it feels like old times. This year, even more so. Games are an excuse to connect with old friends through text messages and Facebook.

Something has been missing, though.

Old Style, as its promotions say, has been Chicago�s beer since 1902. I�m guessing that Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Frank Chance probably knocked back a few after turning double plays behind Mordecai �Three Finger� Brown during that glorious run to the title in 1908.

My dad was from southeastern Iowa but had Chicago sympathies and, well, who really knows why people chose one mass-produced domestic beer over another in the days when there weren�t microbreweries on every corner? In the defense of the man from Hy-Vee, I�m sure I couldn�t tell the difference between Old Style and Hamm�s in a blind taste test.

Just as all the pieces are falling together for the Cubs, whose lineup snapped out of a funk midway through the NLCS, my nostalgic quest was not to be denied. My stepson � a Cardinals fan, but a good kid nonetheless � was going to Kansas City, and I provided him with a list of stores that allegedly sold the liquid time machine.

He texted on Monday night, deed done, noting with some confusion that two people at the store asked him if this was a Cubs-related purchase. Circle of life: He will be bringing me the Old Style in time for the World Series, which begins Tuesday night in Cleveland.

Frank was a man of mathematics, not religion, and I never really subscribed to the whole �he must be up there smiling� stuff anyway. But what is faith? Belief without evidence. Is that not a trait of someone who kept following the Cubs year after year?

So if we witness a sports miracle � the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series � I�ll raise a cold Old Style ... and let him skim a little off the top.