The Boston Red Sox are the 2004 World Champions of baseball. Roll it around on your tongue. Try it on for size. Like a pair of new shoes, it is a phrase that still does not seem to fit quite right.
It is a proclamation many never had the chance to hear in their lifetimes, and one many thought they never would hear. Yet here we are at the close of another October postseason, and it is true. For the first time in 86 years, it is true.
On Wednesday night in St. Louis, the Boston Red Sox finally kicked convention and histrionics in the gut. A team burdened with expectation heading into 2004 capped one of the most unexpected playoff runs ever, sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals in four games to win the 100th World Series in history and become the third straight wild card team to win the Series.
This was not the greatest Fall Classic of all time, an anticlimactic finish after dramatic championship series in both leagues. But in a postseason filled with historic firsts and extraordinary journeys, the path the Red Sox walked to reach baseball's Holy Grail is marked by greatness.
If you believe in fate, then perhaps the stars were aligned correctly with the lunar eclipse on Wednesday night. The World Series began in 1903 with the Red Sox (then known as the Boston Americans) triumphing over the Pittsburgh Pirates. Perhaps winning the 100th Fall Classic was how it was meant to be. But fate or not, the experience remains surreal. Two weeks ago, the Red Sox were, in many minds, all but finished. The 2004 season was quickly washing down the drain, another "almost" campaign for America's perennial bridesmaids.
The club found itself on the short end of an embarrassing 19-8 defeat to the New York Yankees, and down three games to none in the American League Championship Series. But against the odds - as Fox kept reminding us, excluding the Sox, only two teams out of 238 had ever come back from three games down in a series in professional basketball, hockey and baseball - the Red Sox did the near impossible.
Boston took four straight to stun the Yankees and reach its first World Series berth since 1986. It overcame its number one starter, Curt Schilling, pitching with a sutured ankle, Pedro Martinez answering to catcalls of parenthood, and Derek Lowe coming off a disastrous season in which his mental state was questioned.
In a rematch of the 1946 and 1967 Fall Classics, the Red Sox met the Cardinals, the best offensive club in the National League and 105-game winners during the regular season. Against a club boasting three 30 homer, 110 RBI hitters in Albert Pujols, Jim Edmonds and Scott Rolen, Boston simply dominated. The Red Sox were the far more balanced team, combining timely hitting and outstanding pitching, even overcoming ugly defensive lapses in Games One and Two to play solidly in the field.
With the exception of a wild 11-9 seesaw in Game One at Fenway Park, Boston pitchers controlled St. Louis. After explosive division and championship series, the Cardinals' 3-4-5 hitters were limited to just six hits in 45 at bats and one run batted in, severely hindering a St. Louis pitching staff that relied all season on staggering offensive production.
Starters Schilling, Martinez and Lowe allowed just one run - unearned in Schilling's Game Two start due to four Red Sox errors - in 20 innings. Keith Foulke, signed after last season's closer-by-committee debacle, closed out all four games, the true MVP of the Series.
The Boston lineup exposed St. Louis' lack of pitching depth, consistently producing from top to bottom. The team scored 13 of its 24 runs with two outs, and scored in the first inning of all four games, never allowing St. Louis to hold a lead. The Red Sox swung and missed at just 16 pitches out of 369 from the four Cardinals starters.
St. Louis deserved its World Series berth. But it was simply beaten by a far more consistent team.
But what does this World Championship mean for Boston? The title is not just about the 2004 Boston Red Sox, self-proclaimed "Idiots" who underachieved for much of the season, playing .500 ball for three months. It is about coming full circle for an organization that has, for the better part of its century-long history, been cursed. But with all due respect to Babe Ruth, this pittance has nothing to do with "The Curse of the Bambino," a catchy term coined by journalists looking for a story, and reinforced by a team looking for excuses. The real "curse" lay in decades of inept ownership and management that time and again refused to recognize the changing face of baseball.
The team was consistently built around monstrous offensive machines such as Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice, while often lacking enough pitching and fielding depth to regularly compete. Boston was the last team to integrate, doing so with Pumpsie Green in 1959, 12 years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier. The club passed on opportunities to sign Robinson, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, decisions that cost it greater success.
This title embraces generations of Red Sox players and fans who never made it. It is for Williams, Yaz and Rice. Johnny Pesky, Carlton Fisk and Mo Vaughn. Even for Wade Boggs and Roger Clemens, who won championships with the Yankees. Even for Nomar Garciaparra, whose trade this season helped the team win.
On the morning of July 31 this season the Red Sox were spiraling downward, second in the AL East and second in the AL Wild Card. The team expected to win, rather than played to win, despite the offseason acquisitions of Schilling and Foulke. But general manager Theo Epstein brought in defensive depth and speed in exchange for an injured, unhappy star, a move that kickstarted the team's run towards the playoffs.
2004 wipes clean 86 years of overhyped, historical rhetoric hammered into every new generation of baseball fandom. Pesky no longer holds the ball. Enos Slaughter no longer scores. Jim Lonborg no longer goes skiing in the off-season. Bob Gibson. Bucky Dent. John McNamara. Clemens and the blister. Bill Buckner. Mookie Wilson. Ray Knight. Bob Stanley. Grady Little. Aaron Boone. 1918. None of this matters anymore except as part of the historic lore of a winning franchise. No longer must Red Sox Nation say "Wait 'til next year."
The Boston Red Sox. 2004 World Champions.
