Top 100 momentsNo. 70
The Red Sox come back
Boston trail the Yankees 3-0 in the ALCS and win eight straight. An 86-year story ends in St. Louis. Curses, it turns out, are a scheduling problem.
The Yankees lead three games to none. No team has come back from that in a best-of-seven. Dave Roberts steals. David Ortiz hits. The Red Sox take four straight in the ALCS, then sweep St. Louis. The last out is a grounder. Fenway is a noise that had been waiting since 1918.
The Curse of the Bambino had been sportswriting, not witchcraft. 2004 kills the copy. A generation that inherited the losing gets a parade.
Baseball’s best soap opera needed an ending that was not another October collapse. This one is greedy: the Yankees, then the Cardinals, then a winter that finally had nothing to apologize for.