THE WAY THE UNITED STATES has been blowing up its traditions on a daily basis of late is certainly cause for alarm. But I still find a welcome haven in that brilliant 19th Century invention, one of America’s crowning achievements, the greatest game known to man.

“There are three things in my life which I really love: God, my family, and baseball. The only problem — once the baseball season starts, I change the order around a bit,” Al Gallagher, a former San Francisco Giants infielder, once said.

I understand completely.

The months of daily devotion start in the spring, when life is reborn and anything is possible. They continue through the lush hot summer. Then they climax with a final, glorious explosion of beauty, color and drama in October — especially if the Red Sox are there.

And the moment the World Series ends, the world turns gray and “the chill rains come,” former baseball commissioner and literary scholar Bart Giamatti noted.

I attended my first World Series game at Fenway Park on Oct. 5, 1967, a deliriously happy 10-year-old feasting on the requisite menu of roasted peanuts in a little brown bag purchased (still warm) from a cart outside, followed by an in-park hot dog, Coke and ice cream bar. On that golden afternoon, Yaz slammed two home runs, and Jim Lonborg (22-7) silenced the haughty St. Louis Cardinals by pitching a game that was close to perfection, allowing only one hit and one walk.

As a Boston College freshman, I attended all four games of the incomparable 1975 World Series, including the best one I ever saw: Oct. 21, when Carlton Fisk waved his home run fair in the bottom of the 12th inning, to beat the Cincinnati Reds — the Big Red Machine — 7-6.

But it’s in my blood.

I have a sheaf of old scorecards dating back to 1904, contests scored in pencil in the hand of my grandfather, Edward Welt Achorn. (I suspect his father, Adelbert Achorn, attended ball games in the 1880s.) As someone who loves baseball history, and sees the story of America etched on every page of it, I get chills looking at this stuff.

My little collection starts with the second game of a double header on Sept. 16, 1904, between the defending World Champion Red Sox and Yankees — who else? — although they were known at the time as the Pilgrims and Highlanders, respectively, and they played not at Fenway Park but at the Huntington Avenue Grounds.

The lineups are so stable, game after game, that they are printed on the scorecard itself. Cy Young is on the Boston roster, but he doesn’t pitch that game. New York beats us with the great Jack Chesbro, throwing one of his 41 victories that year, the “modern” record. (Providence’s Old Hoss Radbourn, of course, holds the all-time record, with 60 wins in 1884.)

My grandfather has scrawled on his May 9, 1905, scorecard, “E.W.A” and “M.L.C.” I take that to be a very early date — perhaps the first — between my grandfather and my grandmother, Mabel Louise Comey, who died long before I was born. This time, Boston beats the not yet Evil Empire, 5-2.

The couple attended both Boston games of the 1914 World Series, which pitted Connie Mack’s great Philadelphia Athletics against the “Miracle Braves,” the Boston Braves team that had stood in last place on July 19, 15½ games behind the first-place New York Giants, only to roar back and win the National League pennant. Braves Field was under construction, and the Series games were played at two-year-old Fenway Park. With my grandparents looking on, Boston completed an improbable sweep of the heavily favored A’s on Oct. 13.

My favorite scorecard may be the second game of the World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Brooklyn Dodgers — Oct. 9, 1916 — played this time at the new Braves Field, because it was bigger than Fenway. Casey Stengel leads off for the Dodgers.

My grandfather has handwritten the name of a 21-year-old Red Sox southpaw, not printed with the lineup: “Ruth.” That’s Babe Ruth, in his first World Series pitching start, and he is brilliant that afternoon.

“Fine catch. Shoestring,” my grandfather writes about a sixth-inning play by Brooklyn center fielder Hi Myers, robbing Harry Hooper of a hit. Myers was having a good day; he had blasted a home run against Ruth in the first.

But, after the homer, the Bambino holds Brooklyn scoreless for 13 straight innings. The Sox win, 2-1, in the bottom of the 14th, on their way to sweeping the series.

After the game, Ruth yells at his manager, “I told you a year ago I could take care of those National League bums, and you never gave me the chance.”

I marvel at the names on these scorecards, next to my grandfather’s notations of what they did that day, immortals playing before his very eyes: Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Rogers Hornsby, Smokey Joe Wood, Rabbit Maranville, Stuffy McInnis, Wee Willie Keeler.

“Baseball is a game dominated by vital ghosts; it’s a fraternity, like no other we have, of the active and the no longer so, the living and the dead,” Richard Gilman wrote.

And the fraternity grows. Go Red Sox!

Edward Achorn is The Journal’s deputy editorial-pages editor ( eachorn@projo.com).