HOUSTON — Anybody who says the World Series is like any other game either has not been there or is lying to themselves. There is a density to it, a teeming sort of thickness. The place is crowded even before the crowd arrives, the warning track choked with tripods and microphones and made-up faces, some of them broadcasting live, others awaiting the signal to do so, all of them framed by the fluorescent glow of a thousand artificial lights. Beyond this perimeter of professional rubberneckers is a second ring of people whose chief purpose is to be there, mostly because everyone else is there to…
