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Bradley threw the hope pass of his life on Wednesday morning, in his hometown of Crystal City, Mo., when he formally announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States.

This hope pass, like his others, depends upon his faith in the "correct" positioning of others -- specifically, that Democratic primary voters will align themselves with his quixotic mission and loftily obtuse rhetoric instead of the steady, plodding loyalty and efficiency of Vice President Al Gore.

The daunting odds that Bradley will actually pull this off have never seemed more in his favor. In a late August Boston Globe/WBZ-TV poll of 800 likely voters in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, the out-manned, out-funded, out-organized Bradley appeared to be in a statistical dead heat with Gore, 36 percent to 40 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus five points.

Buoyed by the news that his efforts were finally showing results, the lanky, intellectual underdog headed back to the Show Me State where his hometown, 30 miles south of St. Louis, welcomed him with open arms.

Bradley was greeted at the airport Tuesday morning by his friend Dick Cook. Cook steered off the interstate a little early, just so Bradley could relive the thrill of heading down Herky Hill, an age-old touchstone.

"I'm coming home," Bradley said as the car headed down the slope.

But Crystal City, population 4,088, is no longer the Rockwellian dreamland Bradley speaks longingly of on the stump, a town of one traffic light and three policemen.

There are now four traffic lights and 17 cops.

But there's also a bleakness about this town than doesn't mesh with the mythical tranquillity the candidate describes when he speaks of the place "where the world of possibility and hope all began, a world that I want to open for all Americans."

The Pittsburgh Plate Glass factory, which employed 3,500 workers at its peak, started declining, symbolically, right after Bradley left for Princeton. In its heyday, PPG funded the town fire department and paid for the lights for high school football games. But as glass production became an automated industry, PPG started dying. In January 1991, the firm's remaining 263 employees were finally canned.The plant has since been demolished; a weedy field of 100 acres stands in its place.

"It's as if somebody ripped out the pictures from our family album," Bradley said Wednesday as he stood by the site where PPG once stood.

Crystal City is now largely made up of retirees and commuters to St. Louis. Early Wednesday morning, both bars on the city's main stretch on Mississippi Avenue had customers.

To hear the worshipful citizens of Crystal City tell it, however, one item of the Crystal City legend has remained constant throughout all their town's various economic and sociological changes: their favorite son.

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