ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Every week, they listened for the beep, beep, beep of the truck backing into the driveway, swung open the doors and the Eckstein's unloaded 40 and 50 boxes of solutions and dialysis materials. Together, the father and his two teenage sons brought the boxes into a spare bedroom that they had transformed into a storage closet. This was the lifeline for Ken, Christine and Susan. Day after day, David Eckstein watched his brother and sisters held hostage to those machines.

"Why couldn't this happen to us?" David used to share with his older brother, Rick. "Why them?" They were the strong ones. They were well. They were baseball players and the youngest, David, resolved there was never, ever going to be a moment when he didn't cherish this freedom, this miracle of an opportunity, like a precious jewel. This was the Florida family the doctors called a "genetic freak of nature," Rick said, three twentysomething's stricken with a kidney disease that even expert's explanations never made the remotest sense of it.

"You see family histories with this, across several generations, but they had never seen one generation attacked like that," said Rick, an assistant baseball coach at the University of Georgia now.

The Ecksteins were raised on sacrifice and sharing and love, the sweet, soft touch of two school teacher parents -- Herbert and Patricia. They did everything together. There were no slumber parties and no trips with friend's families. The Ecksteins revolved around the Ecksteins and perhaps unknowingly, this upbringing was the proper preparation for everything that awaited them.

The odyssey took its turn in 1988, when Susan fell ill, the doctors stumbled for a diagnosis until it was discovered she needed a kidney transplant. Rick was 16, David 14 and they were too young to be donors. "You see your sister on her deathbed," Rick said, "and you never forget it. You look in her eyes and it stays with you forever."

Patricia Eckstein was a match, donating one of her kidneys to save Susan. And the very day when her daughter finally made it home from the hospital, the family's celebration was squashed with this sobering news: Ken and Christine needed transplants too. As it turned out, they would get the kidneys and get going on good lives.

"When they were going through it, we were going through it," David said. "… You'll never see us take a day off."

At the end of the family's rainbow, David found his fairy tale in the shadows of Disney, the against all odds World Series shortstop for the Anaheim Angels. Eckstein looks like he wandered out of line for Space Mountain and straight and onto baseball's biggest stage. When the Angels were desperate for a victory Sunday night, Eckstein had three hits and scored three runs in Game 2 of the World Series. When Tim Salmon blasted his two home runs, Eckstein was the runner scoring with him.

The Angels wouldn't be the Angels without him, just the way he wouldn't be here without the resolve of his family back home in Sanford, Fla. He had no scholarship offers out of high school, but hung around the batting cage at the University of Florida until they noticed him and gave him a shot to be the starting second baseman. The Red Sox had a career .300 minor-league hitter until they messed with his swing in Triple A in 2000, spiraling him into a .240 hitter who got released.

From out of a job two years ago, to out of this world now. These days, he's a cult hero in Southern California. Baseball needs him. This is the World Series that belongs to the biggest, brawniest musclemen, the Series a world awaited Barry Bonds and his bulging biceps to swing for the moon. Let's face it: Eckstein looks like something the Giants slugger swings on-deck. "He gives a lot of little kids not only inspiration, but hope," Rick said.

David still calls his father every night on the telephone. During the regular season, Whitey follows the games on the Internet, but in the old days, he had to take his son's word on his performances. David was forever harsh on himself; unforgiving even. At Florida, he called his father and scolded himself for poor footwork on a double play, the way he swung at pitches out of the strike zone. "And I'd ask him, 'Well, how'd you do,' " Whitey said, "and I'd hear, 'Well, 3-for-4, with a home run.' "

Beyond the ballpark, Eckstein has no life, no hobbies, no girlfriend. He drives his 1999 Nissan Maxima from his apartment, to the ballpark and back again. This is the car his sister Christine gave him after she had a third child and upgraded to a mini-van. And every two weeks, his paycheck gets deposited into a savings account that includes his mother's name, just so she can take whatever she needs.

He's 27 years old, but he's still the Eckstein's baby. "What I worry about is his eating," Whitey said. "He's a very picky eater. Sometimes, he doesn't eat what's in the clubhouse. He has to go out and he's so reluctant to spend money. He's very frugal. He doesn't spend on himself."

And when October is over, David will go home to Sanford, Fla., back to the bedroom where his Babe Ruth World Series posters still hang, back to where he swears his parents will still make him get up at 7 a.m. to take out the garbage. Maybe it doesn't sound like much for a big baseball star, but this is everything for David Eckstein. This is his family, his home, his inspiration. Yes, this is everything.