No problem. The Sox rallied for three runs off Cliff Lee in the fifth and Jonathan Papelbon closed out the 5-4 win at 9:55, getting Victor Martinez to pop to Alex Cora. Martinez's shallow fly was remarkably similar to the final out of the 1967 Impossible Dream season when Jim Lonborg got Minnesota's Rich Rollins to pop to Rico Petrocelli.
"We've got a chance to do what we did last year, and that's all we were looking for, an opportunity," Dustin Pedroia told the crowd in a NESN postgame interview aired over the public address system.
A season that started in Tokyo and featured numerous speed bumps (a raft of injuries and the midseason trade of quitter Manny RamÃrez) will extend into October. The Sox most likely will open against the Angels next Wednesday or Thursday in Anaheim.
Last night's celebration was considerably tamer than the pandemonium of '67. And it certainly wasn't as wild as last year's American League East clinch bacchanal when Papelbon wound up dancing with a Bud Light 12-pack box on his head. There was no need for mounted police to line the warning track to prevent fans from vaulting the rails.
We should never take the postseason for granted. Sure, there has been expansion of baseball's playoff system. There was a time (as late as 1968) when only one of 10 teams in each league qualified for postseason play. That's two of 20. Today, it's eight of 30 making the playoffs - not quite like the old NHL, which took 16 of 21, but it's considerably easier than it was in the old days.
Still, we could be in a place like Pittsburgh or Kansas City where baseball playoffs are merely a sweet memory, like gasoline for 29 cents a gallon.
Those of us who grew up in the 1950s and '60s remember the hungry years. One of the reasons we immortalize the 1967 Red Sox is because they brought playoff games to Fenway Park for the first time in 19 autumns. That was not the first lengthy Red Sox drought. Way back in the day, the Sox went from 1918 to 1946 without playing a postseason game.
So we are careful not to be too casual about this.
Having said all that, does anybody else find these early-accomplishment celebrations a little overdone?
