Red Sox nation reborn.

• Author: Barrett, Wayne M.
• Position: Sports Scene

ALL GOOD THINGS come to those who wait, or, in the case of anyone stuck in Casablanca or Fenway Park ... wait and wait and wait and wait. Ah, but it always is darkest before the dawn, and Red Sox fans have been wandering around New England sans sunlight since early last century. No longer. Actually, it's hard to imagine the Bosox ending their championship drought in any more an unlikely fashion. With their arch-rivals and eternal tormentors--the New York Yankees--holding a seemingly insurmountable three games to nothing advantage in the American League Championship Series, as well as a ninth-inning lead in Game 4 (with perhaps the greatest closer in baseball history on the mound), the Fenway faithful surely were resigned to--once again--falling back on the old Brooklyn Dodgers' mantra of "Wait till next year." Now, though, we'll all have to wait another lifetime (or two or three) to see such a miracle repeated.

This is the single greatest comeback in sports history--bar none! To have the mighty Yankees, the best team money can buy, the most successful franchise in all of professional sports, become the first major league baseball team ever to blow a 3-0 best-of-seven series lead is unthinkable, and to let it slip away against destiny's doormats, the forever-snakebitten Red Sox ... well ... there are no words.

When the Red Sox last won the World Series in 1918, it capped a run that put Boston's stamp of superiority on the baseball world. It was the club's fourth title in seven years. Along the way, the Sox had wiped out half of the more established--and supposedly superior--National League, with Series triumphs over the New York Giants (1912), Philadelphia Phillies (1915), Brooklyn Dodgers (1916), and Chicago Cubs (1918).

The 1912 confrontation was a seven-game classic in which bad bounces and unpardonable fielding miscues did in manager John McGraw's Giants. It also was just deserts of sorts for the "Little General." Nine years earlier, after Boston (then known as the "Pilgrims") had won the first-ever World Series, the Beantowners were back the following October to defend their crown. Trouble was, the N.L. champion Giants, managed by McGraw, refused to play them, maintaining that the A.L. was inferior to its Senior Circuit brethren. Thus, 1904 and the strike year of 1994, stand as the only two times the World Series has not taken place.

Boston's next three post-season triumphs served as ironic jumping-off" points for some of the most...