An eerie, frightening F-17 stealth fighter floated over the ballpark in a World Series opening-game ritual meant, one presumes, to reassure us that we can blow up most anything anywhere. Then came Barry Bonds to bat, eerie and frightening himself. Soon enough he caused a pitched baseball to float out of the ballpark, passing over right fielder Tim Salmon, who gave an eyewitness account:

"That time of day, the sun's in your eyes, so I didn't see it well at first. I started to move, then I went, 'Oh, yeah.' "

What Barry Bonds does, he does large.

In the first World Series of his Hall of Fame career, Bonds is the cynosure of all eyes and the subject of most every question, such as, to Angels pitching coach Bud Black, "Have fans written you letters suggesting how to pitch to Bonds?"

Black was flummoxed. "Fans?" He decided to play along with the ink-stained scribbler on deadline. "All the time, fans, right. My golf pro, my neighbors." Then he laughed and went legit. "No, no, the guy hit 70 home runs last year and hit .370 this year. Nobody has an answer."

Yes, the unanswerable Bonds has moved into the Babe Ruth/Ted Williams neighborhood, which is a gated community of columned mansions, each with a carpeted, heated garage for the Lamborghini.

But part of baseball's beauty is that a home run, no matter how ostentatiously it leaves the ballpark, counts for as many runs, one, as may be produced by the practically invisible work of a David Eckstein slapping a three-hop ground ball.

What David Eckstein does, he does small.

Not that he has much choice, genetics having decided he'll be 5-8 and 170 pounds with none of those cartoon muscles that have popped out on, oh, picking a name here, Barry Bonds.

So Eckstein, the Angels' shortstop, the team's leadoff hitter, came to bat in the third inning of Game 1, no outs, a runner on second, time to do one of those "little things" of which we read so often and see so seldom. Move the runner to third base by hitting a ground ball to the right side of the infield.

Easier said than done, especially against a pitcher bringing 95 mph heat, as the Giants' Jason Schmidt did, and most especially after you have bunted foul, missed swinging and are down in the count. Here, most hitters give up the attempt; it's hard enough to hit any two-strike pitch, let alone hit it where you want it.

But Eckstein then fouled a pitch right. After taking a ball, he fouled another, this one a screamer into the Giants' dugout. Such was the little guy's determination to do the right thing that Giants manager Dusty Baker, after diving for cover, came up smiling at a professional ballplayer's craftsmanship.

On the next pitch, a third swing with two strikes, Eckstein did in fact slap a three-hopper to the Giants' second baseman, moving the Angels' runner to third. But that runner did not score, a foreshadowing of the night's verdict. "After 'Eck' got the man to third, it's very uncharacteristic of us to not get him in," Angels manager Mike Scioscia said.

Everyone can name five American League shortstops: A-Rod, Nomar, Jeter, Tejada and Vizquel. "Don't forget the little guy with the Angels," a scout said this summer. "When he gets on, they win. He can't do a lot of things those others can. All he can do is beat you." (When Eckstein scored this season, the Angels were 59-17.)

A-Rod is paid $25 million a year. Eckstein is paid 1.1 percent of that, $280,000. Right now A-Rod is on a couch. Eckstein is in a dream.

"A World Series," he said.

"Unbelievable," he said.

"Every kid in the back yard dreams of this," he said.

At 27, in his second big-league season, he's a .293 slap hitter, a plate-crowding pest happy to be hit by pitches. Eckstein was the A.L. leader in that ouch department in each of his seasons, with 21 and 27 bruises. "It's my job to get on base, and after a while you get used to it," he said.

In a clubhouse of XXXL jerseys, Eckstein's is an L. Right fielder Tim Salmon: "But you can't see through that jersey to his heart. To make it at this level, he's got some serious character." Pitcher Jarrod Washburn: "He goes 100 miles per hour at everything he does." Center fielder Darin Erstad: "You wouldn't think, to see him, that he'd be amazing. But if you see him every day, you're amazed."

With two outs in the Giants' fifth and a runner on second, a ground ball took a bad hop toward Eckstein. It hit him in the chest. Another shortstop, less than perfect fundamentally, might have had that ball bounce off a shoulder and away. But Eckstein was dead in front of it, took it off his chest and threw the hitter out.

An almost invisible play.

But Angels hitting coach Mickey Hatcher saw it. And when Eckstein trotted into the dugout, Hatcher patted the little man on the chest.

Hatcher later explained the gesture. He said, "Heart of steel."