More than one wall was cleared when a baseball soared over a brick barrier 49 years ago and lifted the spirits of an entire region. Such is the transcendent nature of sports on 10-year-old dreamers.

Those of a certain age can recall exactly where they were and what they were doing at 3:36 p.m. on Oct. 13, 1960, when Bill Mazeroski's home run in the bottom of the ninth in Game 7 of the World Series delivered a championship for the Pirates. I can.

This day -- a Thursday -- was already special. Understanding the importance of the deciding game of a series played against the New York Yankees, the nun who taught sixth grade at St. Mary's Parochial School in Uniontown bent the rules just this once.

The school day ended at 4 o'clock, with the final hour a study period. Anyone who had a transistor radio with an earpiece could bring it to school to listen to the end of the game, as long as it didn't interrupt schoolwork.

At the time, baseball was an obsession. That summer was my first in organized ball, having made the St. Mary's team. Being the youngest player put me last in line for picking out a uniform. The pants were hilariously oversized and were stitched to patch holes. The only jersey left was No. 9 -- Maz's number. I adopted him as my favorite player and fancied myself as a second baseman.

Kids don't spend much time on sociological implications, but he and I had much in common.

The son of a Polish father and German mother, he grew up in eastern Ohio as a humble and shy kid who learned to hit by tossing rocks in the air and swatting them with a broom handle. His father was coal miner who lost part of his foot in a mining accident.

My parents were the first-generation offspring of Slovak immigrants who eked out a life working in the coalfields that fueled Pittsburgh's hulking steel mills. At the time, the Old Country was under the thumb of Hungary, so when my grandparents got off the steam ships, their citizenship was listed as Hungarian. It was shortened to Hunky by those doing the hiring.

Because they didn't know the language or the customs, they were lumped together under a derogatory name that implied they had strong backs and weak minds. Hunkies, in short, were at the bottom of the social ladder.

One way to become Americanized and to lose the immigrant stigma was baseball. Every town had a team, and my dad and uncles played with a passion that was handed down to us. If someone was good enough to play on the mine owner's team, he could be rewarded with a job that didn't require him to work underground, or he get a free box of Wheaties from the company store.

I can't remember exactly when I picked up the broadcast. The Pirates, who hadn't won a World Series in 35 long years, had a lead, then lost it, then barged in front again and then saw the Yankees tie it up at 9-9 in the top of the ninth.

The 1960 Pirates may have been the biggest underdogs in any World Series, but they were a magical team that came back in their last at-bat on numerous occasions during the season. Aren't underdogs who get up off the canvas the epitome of enchantment?

I can still hear the crack of the bat, and feel the anticipation welling up in the nano-seconds it took the ball to travel over the 406-foot mark. Then came an outburst of unabashed joy.

In those days, Pittsburgh was still a grimy industrial center trying to clean up its air and its act. But at that exhilarating moment, it was baseball heaven. Maz has said that as he crossed home plate, he felt like he was carrying an entire region on his shoulders.

As one who took that ride on his shoulders, I was transformed. It has been said that Jackie Robinson opened the door for blacks players and that Roberto Clemente overcame obstacles for Latinos. For me, if a coal miner's son named Mazeroski could hit a home run to beat the Yankees in the World Series, then anything was possible for a kid with a funny last name with patches on his pants and holes in his shoes.

And if I never did anything approaching Maz on a baseball diamond, I swung at different kinds of fences and cleared different kinds of walls.

Doug Oster writes a blog, "Growing With Doug," exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.