It was 1979. She and her husband were sharing dinner at Schneithorst's, an old-time St. Louis restaurant heavy on the sauerbraten, the Wienerschnitzel and the home-brewed Bud. She was 73, born and reared in the Gateway to the West. She never finished high school, but she kept up with the stocks and invested well. She was a gardener, a lover of birds, of mowing in the summer and raking in the fall.

Her little patch of nature mirrored the cosmos. "Nothing ever dies," she told me once. "One day I won't be here. But it's not important. We all change into something else. A tree turns to soil. The universe goes on."

That night, she was hoisting a forkful of spaetzle when she heard something familiar. It was that voice. "I'll be darned," she said. "That's him, Ralph, that's him!" She tugged on my granddad's sleeve. Naturally, he turned to look. "Don't stare, for heaven's sake!" she said. "He's just having dinner. Jack Buck doesn't want to be bothered!"

She ought to know. There never was a time the Cardinals weren't in her blood. She told me of going to old Sportsman's Park for the seventh game of the 1926 World Series. She couldn't afford a ticket but stayed on the sidewalk just outside, jammed in with the breathless throng, listening to the crowd noise ebb and flow. When the Cards toppled the mighty Yankees, she joined a "snake dance" through the streets of St. Louis. "It didn't matter who you were holding on to," she said. "He was a Cardinals fan."

So was she, from the Frankie Frisch era through Dizzy Dean and the Gashouse Gang, from Sisler to Musial to Brock and McGee. But she never went to a game in person after 1929. "I don't like crowds that much," she said. "It's better on the radio."

We sensed this was true. We lived right around the corner, and growing up, we spent scores of humid nights on her back porch, the Cardinals on the RCA in the background. She was listening. Others were, too, she said - in Illinois, in Arkansas, in Nebraska, all of it Cardinal territory. We soaked up the game, Cardinal-style - the squeeze bunt, the sacrifice, the extra base, the things the little guy could do to win - just as Buck described it.

But that was only true after 1954 - the year the Browns moved to Baltimore - when Buck, after one year in Triple-A Rochester, took his place in the booth beside Harry Caray. Buck wasn't big on topping his partner. His quiet wit thrummed and set off sparks with the Caray bluster. His comments brought the game to life like a moving watercolor. Few knew it but my grandma, but the real voice of the Cardinals was taking shape. "I like that Jack," she'd say. "They should let him call the game."

When they did - in 1968, after Caray left town in a scandal - Buck's generous, low-key, educated patter framed everything that was important and left out what wasn't. It seemed one with the summer night, one with the Cards, one with the whole Midwestern way. Like every great Redbird, Jack knew the game and taught it well, but as his voice went out over 50,000 watts, it felt like he was sitting in your parlor having a chat.

Just as my grandparents were doing that night at Schneithorst's - a rare night out - when a silver-haired man appeared at their table and extended his hand. "I saw you looking over at us," he said. "I wanted to introduce myself. I'm Jack Buck." They chatted for 15 minutes or so, and then Buck left.

"He didn't think he was better than you," she said later with a laugh. "He just knew we thought he was. That's why he did it."

Pearl died three years ago - or changed, as it were. So, now, has Buck.

He entered the Baseball Hall of Fame 15 years ago. He gave voice to plenty of lean years and to seven Cardinal championships. Since he died Tuesday, he has been eulogized coast-to-coast as one of the all-time greats. And before the Cards' home game yesterday, his casket lay on the Busch Stadium field like a head of state's. For hours, more than 10,000 fans streamed by to pay their last respects. That might seem bizarre to those who live beyond the baseball heartland, outside Cardinal Nation.

To tell the truth, Jack would have been embarrassed by all the hoopla. That's why they all came.