Bill, Monica, Ken — take a seat. Cocktail dresses, striped ties, “Leaves of Grass” — we’ll catch you later.

Depositions, testimony, the Tapes — maybe next week.

America’s got something more important going right now.

Baseball.

Major League Baseball’s regular season ended yesterday. The daily games are over for the winter, the losers are packing up the ballparks and heading home, and the winners are getting ready to duke it out in the playoffs.

Just another season’s end, right?

Yeah, right.

Four years ago, baseball was “dead” in America. Overpaid players, greedy owners and despondent fans had transformed America’s pastime to a sorry warmup to the basketball season.

But this year, baseball is alive again.

This year, baseball is fun again.

The Yankees played a season practically to perfection. The Braves continued their mastery, and the Astros made believers out of Houston. And instead of the expected boredom of September, there were actually pennant races.

Anaheim and Texas duked it out until the end for the American League West championship before the Rangers finally clinched, while Toronto kept things up in the air for the Red Sox in the wild card race.

And in the N.L., the Cubs, the Mets and the surprising Giants went down to the wire, with San Francisco and Chicago matching up in a playoff game today for a trip to the postseason.

But, of course, the successful teams aren’t the real stories. Even most of the stand-out players aren’t the focus of this season.

Even if David Wells hadn’t pitched a perfect game against the Twins or Dennis Martinez hadn’t become the winningest Latino pitcher in baseball’s history, America still would’ve been enamored all summer long with the sport.

All because of two players.

They couldn’t be more different. One grew up a Southern California surfer dude, the other a shoeshiner in the Dominican Republic.

But they have two things in common: Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa sure can hit home runs, and they just may have saved baseball for the whole country.

All of America has been riveted on Chicago and St. Louis during the last month.

Even people who think baseball is slow and boring stopped what they were doing to watch McGwire break history, and even those who think the stars are overpaid bums smiled when Sosa said “Baseball has been very, very good to me.”

As opposed to the average professional athlete, these two players have epitomized all that is right in athletics. They have carried on their historic race with grace and charm, in spite of unbelievable pressure and near-insurmountable odds.

This season will live on in our memories as what professional sports should and can be about.

Who can forget Big Mac picking up his son, spinning him around in jubilation? Who can forget Slammin’ Sammy blowing kisses to his mother and pounding his chest after every home run? Who can forget the two hugging in appreciation for each other after McGwire hit his 62nd?

McGwire and Sosa saved baseball not just because of their mammoth accomplishments, but the way they went about their mammoth accomplishments.

They didn’t spit in umpires’ faces, they didn’t kick photographers on the sidelines, they didn’t get involved in bench-clearing brawls.

Instead, they signed autographs for kids, they answered reporters’ questions, they sang each others’ praises.

Because of Sosa and McGwire, America gave its attention to its pastime, the way the sport was meant to be.

Instead of adding to our national disgust, baseball lifted our spirits and heightened our imaginations.

It took our mind off the Starr Report and made us believe in something again.

This is what baseball is truly about — why it is our pastime.

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Sara Ziegler is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Sioux Falls, S.D. She is managing editor of the Daily.