This year, it appears to be a whole new ballgame

Watching the champs roll to another easy, 6-1 win over the Reds in Fenway/Pleasantville last night, Sox CEO Larry Lucchino admitted, ''We have some fans who have decided to cut us some slack. Some have come up and told me, 'It doesn't matter what you do now.' There's a little less intensity in some quarters of Red Sox Nation, but no less in our organization."

Fenway is a festival every game night. Pregame has a carnival feel. All this joy and satisfaction can't help but affect the players, the front office, the media, and the fans.

The Red Sox are operating in a Fever Pitch/Queer Eye/anything goes mode. Everyone and everything is welcome. The new management is in the ''yes" business and it wants to share Fenway with the world. There were no less than four worthy groups of people on the perimeter of the field during Sox batting practice last night. Hundreds of big-eyed folks, all wearing Sox garb, all breathless at the mere thought of standing on the sacred sod. It looked like a cast call for ''Ben-Hur" or ''Gandhi."

In the front office, everybody's wearing the bling. No one in the Sox organization will ever have trouble getting a date again. Just bring that paperweight-size championship ring to that high school reunion and you become Brad Pitt.

Even the media has gone soft. We are ultrapatient with Foulkie, Manny, Edgar, Millar, and anyone else who struggles. Who's a better guy than Alan Embree? Mark Bellhorn keeps his mouth shut and does his best. Dale Sveum? Give the man an honorary degree from the Bill James School of Base Running Smarts.

The clubhouse is Animal House. Terry Francona, rush chairman, damn glad to meet ya.

The Sox were their usual loose selves before taking on the Reds in the series finale. David Ortíz interrupted Francona's media session, walking into the corner office with a life-size cardboard cutout of himself selling a new ''Big Papi" sandwich. Kevin Millar sat in the dugout and did an interview with WEEI while he was being videotaped by a local TV station. Manny Ramírez asked a clubhouse worker for $1,000.

Then the Sox went out and kicked butt. Again. Just another night in paradise.