"How many times can you honestly say you have a chance to shock the world?" Kevin Millar said in the frothy celebration after the sensational finish. "It might happen once in your life or it may never happen. But we had that chance, and we did it. It's an amazing storybook."
Forget the fall foliage romps this weekend. The 100th World Series opens Saturday night at Fenway Park as the Sox face the Astros or Cardinals in the quixotic quest for their first world championship since 1918.
"We still have another hill to climb," Sox president and CEO Larry Lucchino said. "We don't want to forget that in the euphoria of the moment."
Thanks to a magnificent start on two days' rest by Derek Lowe and a big-bang attack led by Johnny Damon, series MVP David Ortiz, and Mark Bellhorn, the Sox became the first team in baseball history to come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a best-of-seven series. Four straight nights the champagne chilled in the Yankee clubhouse, and four straight nights the Sox dodged elimination, marking the first time in 14 years a Boston team beat the Pinstripers four times in as many days.
"How can this not be one of the greatest comebacks in the history of sports?" Sox principal owner John W. Henry said. "This team loves each other so much. They want to win so badly for one another and they wanted to win so badly for these fans. There's no way you can do this unless you have incredible heart."
The Sox won the franchise's 11th AL pennant in a wondrous twist in a journey that began 243 days earlier when they gathered for spring training to avenge last year's heartbreaking loss in Game 7 of the ALCS to the Yankees. But they also scored sweet revenge for forebears such as Johnny Pesky and Bobby Doerr, who lost the final two games of the 1949 season to the Yankees with the pennant on the line, and Jim Rice and Dwight Evans, who watched Bucky "Bleeping" Dent's home run ruin their chances for a division title in a one-game division playoff in 1978.
