ST. LOUIS, Oct. 27 - This was for the believers. For Ted Williams and for Yaz and all the others who spent a career beneath a boulder that kept rolling down a hill. This was an exorcism of 86 years of anguish.
On Wednesday night, Babe Ruth gave up. From Bangor to Brattleboro, Nashua to Nantucket, Waterbury to Woonsocket, the fans of New England can finally say it: The Boston Red Sox are the World Series champions. Nothing will ever be quite the same.
The Red Sox won the World Series on Wednesday for the first time since 1918, overcoming, at last, the sale of Ruth to the Yankees. The Red Sox, the franchise that perfected heartbreak, won the title with one of the most dominating performances in World Series history, silencing the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-0, in Game 4 to sweep a series in which they never trailed. They won their last eight games of the season.
"This is for anyone who ever played for the Red Sox, anyone who ever rooted for the Red Sox, anyone who ever saw a game at Fenway Park," said Red Sox General Manager Theo Epstein, hoisting a bottle of Champagne in the Boston locker room. "This is bigger than the 25 guys in this clubhouse. This is for all of Red Sox Nation, past and present."
Boston won it in the city where Johnny Pesky held the ball in Game 7 of the 1946 World Series, the first of four Series calamities for the Red Sox. More than an hour after the final out, thousands of fans remained at Busch Stadium, reveling as their team carried the winners' trophy around the field. They chanted, "Thank you, Red Sox!"
Continue reading the main storyPitcher Tim Wakefield, the longest-tenured Red Sox player, said he knew of a chant that would never be repeated, at Yankee Stadium or anywhere else. The Red Sox came back to beat the Yankees in the American League championship series after losing the first three games, and their victory here broke their cosmic curse. "We won't hear that '1918' chant again," Wakefield said. "It's tremendous for the city of Boston. Those people have put up with too many sad days."
The new question in Boston will not be when the Red Sox will ever win the World Series. It may be how many statues to erect at Fanueil Hall. There were many heroes of this World Series, with the starting pitchers standing tallest.
Curt Schilling allowed no earned runs over six innings in Game 2, with blood seeping from his injured right ankle and through his sock. Pedro Martínez, the ace who may have thrown his last pitch for the team, shut out the Cardinals for seven innings in Game 3. Derek Lowe, who earned the victory in the clinching game of all three postseason series this fall, did the same on Wednesday, allowing only three hits and a walk.
"We had fun," Lowe said, summing up the season. "We tried to be kids, as much as we possibly could, and it worked."
In the ninth inning, they got to act like youngsters one last time. Eighteen years to the day after the Mets' Jesse Orosco struck out Boston's Marty Barrett for the final out in 1986, Keith Foulke, the Red Sox' closer, fielded a grounder from Edgar Renteria, who wears Ruth's No. 3.
Foulke, who recorded the final out in all four Series games, took a few steps toward first and carefully made an underhand toss to Doug Mientkiewicz. The series was over, and catcher Jason Varitek pounced on Foulke between the mound and the first-base line. The rest of the team poured from the dugout and the bullpen, a joyous throng.
Curtis Leskanic, a relief pitcher, fell on his back and flapped his arms, as if making a snow angel on the infield grass. He said it was a nod to the New England Patriots, champions of the N.F.L., who once celebrated a playoff victory that way.
Manny Ramirez was named most valuable player of the Series, batting .412 with a home run and four runs batted in. Ramirez, the carefree slugger most likely headed for the Hall of Fame, credited the team's demeanor. To beat back years of agony, he seemed to say, maybe the Red Sox needed to be oblivious.
"We're a bunch of idiots," Ramirez said. "We don't think out there. We go and play the game the way it is, and that's what it's all about. When you play so relaxed, a lot of things can happen for you."
The Red Sox scored in the first inning of every game. On Wednesday, Johnny Damon got them going, ripping a leadoff homer into the Cardinals' bullpen. When St. Louis tried to respond in the bottom of the first, its rally quickly fizzled.
Tony Womack led off with a single, bringing up Larry Walker, the Cardinals' leading hitter in the Series. Walker had not put down a sacrifice bunt since May 4, 1991, but these were desperate times. Acting on his own, he bunted Womack to second.
Up came Albert Pujols, who grounded out to second. Scott Rolen followed with a dribbler up the first-base line, and he dived for the base. But Lowe grabbed the ball and tagged him for the third out.
It continued like that for St. Louis. In the fourth inning, Lowe fooled Pujols on a slider for a swinging third strike. Rolen swung at the next pitch and popped out meekly to first. Even Cardinals fans, the most polite in baseball, were moved to boo.
Rolen finished the series 0 for 15. Jim Edmonds was 1 for 15 with a bunt single. Pujols, the most fearsome hitter in the National League besides Barry Bonds, drove in no runs.
"That's the way it goes; that's part of the game," Pujols said. "If you look at Manny Ramirez, he didn't get any R.B.I.'s the last series. I don't think they pitched so tough. We just hit some balls good and they made some good plays. It's over, what can you do? You can't say you want that pitch back, because it's over."
The Red Sox, who mastered the two-out rally in the World Series, did it again in the third inning. After Pujols threw out Ramirez at home on a grounder to first, the Red Sox had runners at the corners with two out. But Jason Marquis walked Bill Mueller, loading the bases for Trot Nixon.
Nixon likes to swing early in the count, but he let Marquis's first three pitches go by for balls. With a 3-0 count, Marquis left a pitch over the middle and Nixon smashed it off the fence in right-center field. Two runs scored, the final two runs of the season.
The Cardinals put a few more runners on, but none even reached third base. By 10:40 p.m. local time, they were finished. And with a lunar eclipse giving a reddish tint to the moon above, the Red Sox franchise was altered forever.
"I think it changes the image of the franchise, but it doesn't diminish it," Larry Lucchino, the Red Sox' president, said. "It will transform it into something a little bit different than what it's been known for. But it will still be a special, distinctive and extraordinary franchise."
Epstein, the general manager, grew up in Boston with the lessons of generations before him. He and his twin brother, Paul, stood together on a couch in 1986, when they were 12 years old, ready to jump for joy when the Red Sox beat the Mets.
That victory never came, and this year when the Yankees led the Red Sox in the championship series, three games to none, Epstein knew the facts. No team that had ever been in such a hole had recovered to win the series.
The Red Sox' players knew it, too, but they did not care. They have not lost since. They are the last team standing. They made history.
"They believed," Epstein said. "That's all that matters."
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