The opening acts of one of sports’ most intriguing dramas are now over. All that remains is the final scene.

The 1998 Major League Baseball season already will go down in the annals of history as one of the most memorable seasons on record. Few people soon will forget watching game by game as the St. Louis Cardinals’ Mark McGwire and the Chicago Cubs’ Sammy Sosa chased and ultimately surpassed Roger Maris’ single-season home run record.

But this season doesn’t deserve a forgettable ending, it deserves one of those endings reserved for fairy tales.

The way I see it, the only satisfying ending is one in which Sosa and McGwire end the 162-game season tied for the home-run record.

Consider the other scenarios if you doubt it.

Let’s say McGwire goes unconscious once again and hits five or six more home runs to end the season, blowing Sosa off the face of the map. McGwire got most of the limelight for breaking the record first, so Sosa would recede into the shadows even more.

Then Sosa – who also toppled Maris’ 37-year-old record a few days after McGwire – and his home run total will be almost an afterthought in history. Sure he still eclipsed Maris, but he will have had the bad luck of hitting more than 61 in the same season the record was broken. He’ll be sandwiched between two immortalized names without ever breaking the single-season mark.

As sad as that scenario makes me, the other possibility is just as pitiable. It is feasible that Sosa will get hot while McGwire goes cold and Sosa will end up as the record-holder. Then McGwire’s yearlong quest almost will have been for naught. He dealt with all the media and fan pressure since spring training – just so he could finish second while Sosa cruised behind him for the entire season. Somehow that doesn’t seem quite fair either.

But if both players hit the same number of home runs, I think everyone – including Sosa and McGwire and me – will be happy. The two of them have done something no other player in baseball ever has accomplished, and they deserve to be recognized on an equal plane. They deserve to stand side by side in the record books instead of being divided into first and second place.

Even Cardinals fans and Cubs fans – and those fans who are pulling just for McGwire or Sosa – would be happy with that arrangement. If they tie, both get an equal share of history.

Of course, the happy ending to the 1998 season could be extended beyond the occurrence of a tie between McGwire and Sosa. If both of them would go on a tear at the very end of the season and challenge 70 home runs, the excitement would probably be comparable to when McGwire hit 62. A home run a game for the last week of the season is probably unlikely, but it would be great to watch.

And maybe even a co-most valuable player award will be in the cards. Many say Sosa deserves the award more because the Cubs have performed better than the Cardinals, but I feel both men should be able to take credit for being the most valuable players for baseball – for more than what they did on the field.

They breathed new life into a sport that has ailed since the 1994 strike. They were two guys that we could pull for day in and day out; that we could read about with pride on the front page of the sports section each day; that we could admire as decent human beings; that we could aspire to be like.

But there’s one thing that could make the season unparalleled. The Cardinals have had a dismal season after high preseason expectations and will finish around the .500 mark. But the Cubs are in the wild card race in the National League and will appear in the playoffs if they can hold off the New York Mets.

The last time the Cubs won the World Series was 1908. Wouldn’t it be something if this already amazing year would become even more magical? Maybe Sosa and his Chicago teammates have a World Series trophy in their feature.

But that might be too much to ask, even for a fairy tale.