Is the Curse Reversed?

By Sean Gregory; Jane Bachman Wulf/Boston; New York

Fans of the Boston Red Sox are defined by the magnificence of their misery. They can itemize their team's climactic agonies like the Stations of the Cross. A tantalizing lead, inevitably followed by victory-snatching disaster, stains their dreams and scars their muscle memory. Since 1918, the last time Boston won a World Series, postseason has been the haunt of red October. And so very often the satanic specter for Red Sox Nation has been Damn Nation: the New York Yankees. A home run by Bucky (Freakin') Dent in a one-game playoff in 1978; an 11th-inning blast by Aaron (Flippin') Boone in last year's seven-game playoff heartbreaker. Why, there might even be a curse--of the Bambino, perhaps. For it was the 1920 trade of Sox star Babe Ruth to New York that sent the Yanks on their way to 26 championships while the Ruthless Red Sox went ringless and the fans nursed their creepy karma like a drunk with his last beer.

Well, Boston will have to put its masochism on hold for a few more days. In a reversal so dramatic and historic that the New York Daily News ran the headline HELL FREEZES OVER, the Sox roared back from a three-game deficit to sweep four games from the Yanks--the first time that had been accomplished in baseball's 102-year postseason history--to win the American League Championship Series (ALCS). They advanced to the World Series against another old nemesis, the St. Louis Cardinals, who defeated the plucky Houston Astros in a similarly adventurous seven-game fracas. With the Yankee phantoms of their failures--the Babe, Bucky and Boone--momentarily exorcised, Red Sox fans could hope for a championship, lifting a psychic boulder that has both crushed and linked generations of neurotic New Englanders. "If we win, people will be crying," said Sox fan Tom Faria, celebrating at the Yankee Tavern in the Bronx after Game 7. "Not just because they're happy. They'll be crying for their fathers. Just for that bond."

Fans live in the past. Their loyalty is built on stats and mental snapshots of games from decades before. They know, if only through oral tradition, that St. Louis won the 1946 World Series because of Boston shortstop Johnny Pesky's late throw to the plate and that in 1967 three wins by the Cards' magnificent pitcher Bob Gibson trumped the awesome batting of that sainted Sox Carl Yastrzemski. Fans on each side will surely remind themselves that those Series went the full seven, with St. Louis winning both.

But athletes live in the moment. Focus is everything. They don't believe in curses; they believe in skills. That's true of Larry Walker, who came to the Cards in August and helped St. Louis to its first World Series appearance since 1987. He heads a fearsome foursome, including first baseman Albert Pujols, the game's best young player; third baseman Scott Rolen, a perennial candidate for Most Valuable Player; and center fielder Jim Edmonds, who hit 42 homers this year.

The Cardinals-Astros series didn't have the mythic juice or marquee matchup of Yankees-Sox. And because Fox TV aired most of the National League Championship games either at night opposite the ALCS or in the afternoon, that tense, seesaw tussle lacked for attention. But not for theatrics: Pujols batting .500 and banging four homers, Edmonds, pursuing line drives like Michael Phelps bulleting into an Olympic pool and Astros ace Roger Clemens, 42, who pitched in Series for both the Red Sox (losing to the Mets) and the Yanks (beating the Mets), trying valiantly, vainly to get his hometown team to the finals. As commentator Jim Rome noted, it was "the best series that no one ever saw."

Everybody saw pitcher Curt Schilling. He's the kind of guy--smart, tough, gifted, spitting self-confidence--who sees a curse as a challenge. Schilling, brought to Boston last November specifically to beat the Yankees, amassed 21 victories but came up lame for the first game of the ALCS. New York truncheoned the cripple for six runs in three innings en route to a 10-7 win. It appeared that Schilling, with a dislocated peroneal tendon in his ankle, could not start until late in the series--if the Sox could get to late. But doctors (first testing their unique technique on a cadaver) worked some impromptu magic, suturing the skin around the tendon. The Sox did their part, winning two games in extra-inning, five-hour-plus thrillers at Fenway Park, with new hero David Ortiz knocking in walk-off hits.

Schilling, rising like a rebuilt pitching robot, walked to the Yankee Stadium mound for Game 6. He permitted just one run in seven innings, silencing New York studs like Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield and Hideki Matsui. It was a masterful job--and a heroic one, with TV cameras focused on the blood seeping through his sock. It was so gory, it might have been an episode of CSI: Curt Schilling's Incision. After the game, though, someone discarded Schilling's blood-red sock, potentially the most treasured relic since Veronica's veil. It could have netted a bundle on eBay.

Schilling wasn't the only Lazarus in the Red Sox resurrection. Loose-cannon center fielder Johnny Damon, whose beard and long hair made him look like Jesus--or Charles Manson--was an impotent lead-off man for most of the series. He trimmed his locks and hit a grand-slam homer in the last game. The Red Sox pitchers, pounded silly in a 19-8 loss in Game 3, reclaimed their poise and waved off exhaustion to surrender only 13 runs in the last four.

Newspapers in the Dominican Republic--home to Sox stars Ortiz, Pedro Martinez and Manny Ramirez--hailed EL MILAGRO POR LOS MEDIAS ROJAS. But some credit for the Red Sox miracle has to go to the Yankees--who, after building a three- game lead, forgot how to play Yankee baseball. They showed little patience at the plate and too much on the base paths--and in the case of ace closer Mariano Rivera, didn't automatically stifle the opposition. The result: a team with a $184 million payroll (the Red Sox are second, at $127 million) performed the most crushing seven-game swan dive the grand old game ever witnessed.

Sox fans were ecstatic. "Now, whenever they talk about 2-0, 3-0 comebacks in any sport, they'll mention the Boston Red Sox," exulted Brian Chen, 24, a consultant. "And just as good, the Yankees will be known for the biggest choke in sports history." Yankees loyalists tried for stoicism. "We're great at setting records," said Tony Surajpal of the Bronx, "and we just set another one."

The man has a point. The Yankees were awful for four days; the Red Sox have fallen short for 86 years. They gave their fans hope when they won the World Series' first game, 11-9, in a comedy of errors (five) and homers (three). Is Boston playing the tease again, only to lose a spirit-crushing Game 7? Or will there, at last, be cheering and crying in Red Sox Nation? --Reported by Sean Gregory and Jane Bachman Wulf/Boston and New York