Now they are face to bearded face with a game that will define them. If the Sox lose to the Yankees again tonight, they effectively are done for the season. No baseball team has recovered from a 3-0 deficit in a best-of-seven series. Losing to the Yankees without putting up any kind of a fight would earn them a place of disgrace in Boston sports lore. It would dissolve all of the team's accomplishments. It would make them look like cocky, dopey slobs who folded when it counted most.
But it does not have to go down that way. There's plenty of precedent for coming back from an 0-2 deficit. The Sox did it in a five-game series against the Indians (1999) and A's (last year), and the Mets beat the Red Sox in the 1986 World Series after losing the first two games at home. The vaunted Yankees have twice lost a (World) series after winning the first two games. It happened to them in 1955 against Brooklyn and again in 1981 against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
So the Nation will be buoyed and confident again if the Red Sox can win tonight and make this a real series. And the Franconamen are capable of turning the series around, even if Curt Schilling doesn't pitch again until Fort Myers. The Sox were 55-26 (.679) at Fenway this year, the second-best home record in baseball. They hit .306 at home, averaging 6.4 runs per game, tops in the majors. They should be able to hit Kevin Brown and Orlando Hernandez (of course, we said that about Jon Lieber), especially at Fenway.
In the meantime, what they have done to their loyal fans borders on criminal. The region has given its heart to the local baseball team, only to have it stomped on yet again.
Even from the grave, Charles Schulz has Lucy yanking the football away again. Fans who pledged never to return after last October (just as they made the same vow in 1986, 1978, and all the other years of heartache) dived headfirst into the themes and schemes of the 2004 Red Sox.
