CHICAGO -- The shroud covering baseball the entire season lifted at precisely 12:20 p.m. CT when the Wrigley Field ticket takers raised the metal screens guarding this 88-year-old ballpark and the fans flowed through the gates.

Clutching a box of baseball cards in his hand, Bryan Byrnes squeezed through the turnstiles and sprinted into the stands, the first fan to catch a glimpse of the lush green field, the ivied walls and the historic scoreboard that have meant summer here for generations of fans.

	At Wrigley Field, Marcus Lyons sold peanuts before the game.

Byrnes drove from his home in Wisconsin to the ballpark Friday morning before the players and owners had reached an agreement that prevented the strike. Not knowing one way or the other, he bought a ticket and simply hoped there would be a game.

No surprise in that, really. Being a Cubs fan is an act of faith in itself. If you're willing to believe each spring that the Cubs will reach the World Series, there's no reason to think the players and owners can't agree on a way to divvy up $3.5 billion in annual revenues.

"I was optimistic there would be a deal, but still there was a bug in the back of my mind saying it might be 'Here we go again,' " said Byrnes, 41. "I think a strike would have hurt the game immeasurably. The fans would have been hard-pressed to come back this time. There is no Cal Ripken playing streak, no Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa home run chase this time. And all this strike stuff had gotten old."

Fortunately all that strike stuff is not only old, it is old news. And Friday was, as Ernie Banks would say, a beautiful day for baseball, an afternoon of blue sky, bright sunlight, warm temperatures and a refreshing breeze. The crowd, however, was sparse at game time. The stadium was perhaps half-filled for the first pitch and many fans wore red and rooted for the Cardinals. The stands filled steadily as the game wore on though, and the Cubs announced an official paid attendance of 36,311.

	“	It was like Christmas morning. It's like when you go to bed Christmas (Eve) hoping there'll be a bike under the tree and then you wake up and rush to see whether there's a bike there. ”
		— Steve Kline, Cardinals pitcher, on the anticipation over whether the players and owners would come to an agreement

"There were quite a few empty seats early but I checked up later and it looked like it filled up pretty good," St. Louis manager Tony La Russa said after his team's 6-3 victory. "I'm not sure whether the fans knew whether it was worth driving up, especially from St. Louis, not knowing whether the game was going to be played."

Exactly. The Cubs couldn't expect too many fans like Byrnes lining up early when fans not only went to bed Thursday night not knowing whether there would be a game played, but woke up not knowing, either.

If they even went to bed that is. Sammy Sosa said he didn't go to bed until 4:30 in the morning, instead sitting in front of the television watching ESPN for news on the negotiations. St. Louis general manager Walt Jocketty said he went to bed about midnight, but couldn't sleep.

"I always was confident we would get something done because we've been so close," Jocketty said. "But when we didn't get an agreement last night, I started to get concerned."

Cardinals player representative Steve Kline took part in a conference call with the union late Thursday night and another call when he woke up in the team hotel in downtown Chicago. He said he was told at 10 a.m. that the sides still were negotiating, at 10:30 that a couple teams were being told to board their planes for Friday night's games and at 10:45 that the Cardinals should go to Wrigley Field because a deal had been reached.

"It was like Christmas morning," he said. "It's like when you go to bed Christmas (Eve) hoping there'll be a bike under the tree and then you wake up and rush to see whether there's a bike there."

Cubs pitchers Antonio Alfonseca and Juan Cruz were the first players to arrive at the park, and when they did, La Russa and his coaching staff already were at the ballpark, arriving hours ahead of time as usual. "We had to get ready for the game," he said. "If there wasn't a game, we just throw the paper in the trash."

Sean Toal was playing basketball in a park when his father told him and his friend, Billy Anton, that a strike had been averted and they were going to the game. Barely an hour later, the two 11-year-olds were leaning over the low wall behind home plate, watching batting practice and begging players for autographs. So, too, was Byrnes.

"I'm hoping they'll be a little humbled by this experience and more fan friendly," Byrnes said, stationed by the Cubs dugout. "Because without us, there is no baseball. That's what people need to remember. Without the fans, all this goes away."

Indeed. Some teams -- generally the ones shouting loudest for increased revenue-sharing -- still haven't recovered from the 1994 strike and there was a strong fear that yet another strike would be devastating for everyone else as well. "It came down to us playing baseball or having our reputations and life ripped by the fans," Kline told reporters. "Baseball would never have been the same if we had walked out."

"It would have been horrible for everybody involved in, or who has a stake in major-league baseball," La Russa said. "Probably what happened last September and the economy (were factors). It all adds up. But a lot of it was all the negativity following 1994. The anger the fans showed after that was very important in this."

Instead, a deal was reached, the strike was averted and everyone found a bicycle underneath their tree. The fans spilled through the turnstiles, the grounds crew tended the field, the concessionaires sold expensive beer and the players took the field. In many ways, it was a typical late summer game at Wrigley Field with the Cubs losing again. Chicago fell behind early -- it trailed 6-0 by the third inning -- and the crowd had little to cheer other than the fact that baseball was being played as scheduled.

"The deal went down to the last minute so we didn't know what was going to happen," Cubs outfielder Corey Patterson said. "Today was a little strange but I think in the next couple days it will back to normal."

It's a great day for baseball. Let's play all 162.

Jim Caple is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at cuffscaple@hotmail.com.