A hitter with gloved hands and a hot bat would have to settle Game 1 of the World Series. And Boston's Mark Bellhorn did. Bellhorn's two-run homer in the eighth inning off the right field foul pole broke a 9-9 tie and gave the Red Sox an 11-9 victory in an enchanted and shivering Fenway Park.

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A game that began with David Ortiz's three-run rocket shot for Boston in the first inning and a 7-2 lead after the third turned into a trial of focus and concentration, where the conditions had to be beaten along with the opponent.

It made for lots of runs, anyway. This was the highest scoring Game 1 in World Series history. Not surprising from the top offensive teams from each league.

"It's going to be a battle," said Bellhorn, who has homered in three straight playoff games from the ninth spot in Boston's lineup of bashers. "We're going to score runs, they're going to score runs. It's whoever gets the last ones."

"I think it's real clear," said St. Louis manager Tony La Russa, "both clubs are used to playing nine innings. You send up danger every inning, so you're never out of the game."

The Red Sox nearly beat themselves in the field. A team that had committed two errors in 10 postseason games had four in one night, the most by a team in a World Series game in 22 years. They threw one ball into the St. Louis dugout, another into the first base photographer's booth.

Not to mention Manny Ramirez's eighth inning left-field misadventures, when two errors helped the Cardinals to two runs, and a 9-9 tie.

"That was not a video to send to the instructional league," said Boston manager Terry Francona. "That was a little rough. We did some things wrong, but we persevered, and we won."

The climate did not help. Temperatures were dropping through the 40s, with the wind blowing in. And the game dawdled, as games do in American League ballparks. When Keith Foulke finally struck out Roger Cedeno for the last out, the game was four hours old.

It was, in fact, just the place for imperfect, and sometimes puzzling baseball.

There were 14 walks, two hit batters. Neither starting pitcher made it out of the fourth inning. The Cardinals scored three runs in the fourth without a hit.

Pitching location suffered. Bellhorn homered on a 1-2 pitch from Julian Tavarez that got too much of the plate - hopefully he didn't get mad and break his other hand.

"Just one bad pitch. Just one mistake," Tavarez said. "It was a slider down the middle that I wanted a little further in. It's as cold for them as it is for us," Tavarez said.

Indeed, it is bottom-line time, and the Red Sox showed there would be no offensive letdown from their heroics in the Bronx. "The farthest thing from my mind," Francona said before the game.

Boston will try to improve on its 1-0 lead with Curt Schilling in Game 2 Sunday night, against Matt Morris.

St. Louis has now lost seven straight World Series road games. That dark number can hardly be assigned to these Cardinals, since the other six came in 1985 and '87.

But this number can be: St. Louis is 1-5 on the road in this postseason.

Bellhorn's homer also scored Jason Varitek, who had reached on Edgar Renteria's error at short. The Cardinals were flubbing, too.

It was the latest blow from Bellhorn, who is turning into something of a common man champion for October.

"I'm not trying to be a hero," he said. "I'm just trying to win four games."

Until then, it was a case of who might goof last.

Boston lost a 9-7 lead in the top of the eighth with the Ramirez Follies.

His first error came on Renteria's single, that allowed a run to score. His second, one for the blooper library, came when he caught his cleats trying to make a sliding catch of a Larry Walker fly, took a divot that a bad 6-iron might make, and had the ball go off the top of his glove. Another run scored for the 9-9 tie.

"We won," Ramirez said. "That's all that counts."

It took the Red Sox eight at-bats against Woody Williams to get a 4-0 lead in the first, three on a monstrous shot around the right field foul pole by Ortiz.

The Cardinals closed to 4-2, including Walker's solo homer. But the Red Sox knocked out Williams with three more runs in the third for a 7-2 lead. By then, they had scored more runs in three innings than the Houston Astros had scored against the Cardinals the last two games of the NLCS.

"We have all these Gold Gloves on the field and I just didn't get to use them tonight," Williams said.

Boston starter Tim Wakefield walked the bases loaded in the fourth, and the Cardinals ended up scoring three runs with the help of an error. They scored two more in the sixth to tie, aided by another error, and the fourth Walker hit

The Red Sox went ahead 9-7 with Ortiz's fourth RBI, and a bad-hop RBI grounder by Ramirez that hit second baseman Tony Womack in the collarbone and sent him for x-rays, which were negative.

So the World Series opened with a close game, if not an elegant one.

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