September, 1981.

Two weeks remain in the baseball season. The American League East is bunched together and the Red Sox, typically, are in the thick of things trailing division-leading Detroit by just half a game.

On a Monday night, third-place Milwaukee, a dynamic, powerful ballclub hitting its stride in the season's final days, arrives at Fenway Park for an old-time, chills-down-the-spine September series.

Detroit is at Baltimore. Cleveland is at New York. A Red Sox win and a Tiger loss puts the locals in first place for the first time all summer.

It is a Monday night in late September. 14,575 watch the Sox defeat Milwaukee, 9-3.

There is no pennant race in Boston.

It is a Tuesday night in late September and the city is talking sports. September is always a time of controversy in this city, and this September is no exception. From a quick scan of the radio talk shows it is easy to find the controversy and the arguments that nourish and fortify sports, raising it from the level of a pastime to a zeal, a religion.

Here is what the arguing is about: Sam (Bam) Cunningham, the Boston College Eagles, Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Larry Bird, John McEnroe, the Boston Bruins.

18,363 see the Brewers beat Boston, 10-8, on two ninth-inning runs.

There is no pennant race in Boston.

And yet some fans will tell you that 1981 has been baseball's best year.

These fans live in Toronto and Chicago. They live in Minneapolis and Cleveland, in San Francisco and Atlanta. There are exciting pennant races in all of those places; excitement for the first time in years.

This has been baseball's best year. Late September, and nobody is out of it yet. There is tension and interest for the lowliest teams, for everybody is still fighting, no team is out of the running.

Baseball's best year plods inexorably toward the World Series.

There is no pennant race in Boston.