How about that? Sox are Champs for the fourth time this century

Al Zarilla

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Dec 8, 2005
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San Andreas Fault
My father tonight... “All I ever wanted was to see one. Four? That’s too much. This is too much.”

You deserve it, Pop.
I don’t know how old your father is, but after game 7, 2003, I thought for the first time I may never see one. It’s SO HARD to even get there (World Series). Now, four? Unreal.
 

boxosII

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Jun 26, 2006
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they are now over .500 in World Series in my lifetime. before '04 I saw them go 0-3 in WS. I will never take this feeling for granted

and whenever they've won The Championship I think of two people. My father and his hero, Ted Williams.
 
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Minneapolis Millers

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Jul 15, 2005
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2004 was deliverance. 2007 was affirmation. 2013 seemed almost a bonus, and I was by that point what seemed impossible for so long - a happy, even satisfied, Sox fan. Yet a small part of me had a nagging doubt: After winning 3 WS titles in 10 years, was that it? Was the run entirely a product of the Papi Era? Was it all over now that Ortiz had retired?

Answer: No. This club, so well-run and all-in from ownership on down, is the GREATEST FRANCHISE OF THIS MILLENIUM!

And we're here to witness it all. Living the dream, my friends...
 

kartvelo

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My dad was born December 1912 and died December 1996. Never got to see even one. Enjoy this while you can. You must have a great dad.
Yeah, my dad was born in 1927 and died in 2002. He followed the Sox faithfully through thick and thin. He died at age 75 without seeing a single Red Sox WS win.
I've seen four since then.
 

Major Major

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Jul 10, 2018
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All the pundits waxing poetic about the historically great Sox today, but for a team this incredible and this consistent, they were doubted and a little disrespected relative to their numbers. The MFY won one game and got puffy, with Judge and his NY NY nonsense. Then Houston won one game and they got puffy, with Bregman and his Eovaldi Instagram nonsense. And even when they were up 2-0 and tied in extras, the narrative was how this could be a double loss and sink the ship. Fuck that. This ship was never going down. It had a steady hand in Cora and a family of bad asses that just smirked at the doubters and BURIED THEM ALL!
 

rodderick

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My country just elected a proto-fascist president yesterday, so needless to say I'll cherish this World Series win forever. This team was a shining beacon of light in an overall horrific month.
 

kartvelo

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Hey, we've had one here for two years. We need all the beacons of light we can get, too!
 

SumnerH

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Jul 18, 2005
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Such a cool, random piece of trivia that someone else posted before the game, worth updating here:

The Red Sox have now clinched a World Series in all four American time zones this century.
There are 11 American time zones, even discounting local Daylight Saving variance.
 

opes

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I’ve mentioned in a few of these threads how this year is the first time my oldest has really been the baseball junkie that I am. She tried to make it through the 18 inning game, knows the matchups well enough to ask why ERod was still in vs Puig and cried in joy when Sale buckled Machado. She’s got her superstitions about what to wear and where to sit.

She was born in 2007 and I explained to her that she’s had 3 WS champion teams in her life and I’ve only had one more in mine. How the team that she knows never has felt snake bit or “cursed”. How John Henry has built an organization that runs so well from top to bottom and allows the guys to do their job.

It’s so awesome to be able to share this team with her and my other daughters. She’s sleeping in her Wakefield jersey and probably has as big a grin as I did in 04.

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Thats super cool man. For a kid to come into the world, becoming a Sox fan, and watching a World Series at that age. Remarkable.
 

Beale13

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Feb 2, 2006
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The Red Sox still haven't lost enough World Series games this century to be eliminated from a World Series despite having played in four of them.
 

Saints Rest

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Yeah, my dad was born in 1927 and died in 2002. He followed the Sox faithfully through thick and thin. He died at age 75 without seeing a single Red Sox WS win.
I've seen four since then.
My Dad was born about 6 months after the 1918 win; he died the weekend that the Sox signed Schilling (a weekend that will live in SOSH lore forever) which means roughly 11 months before the 2004 victory.

On the flip side, this post-season was the first time that my 6-year old son had gotten into baseball on TV. He knows a lot of the players by sight, knows that Mookie is the best, and that Machado "should be kicked out of baseball for kicking that guy."

I've told this story before, but I think it's worth re-telling in the spirit of the thread, on the day of ALDS G3, at my son's baseball practice, his coach was giving a little wrap up talk to the kids after practice. Now this guy is a HUGE Yankee fan — always wears all NYY garb at every game and practice — so at the end he says: “Now go home and watch the game tonight. If your parents tell you to go to bed, you have them call me.”
So my son, calmly sitting there holding his wooden Red Sox bat (thanks to his cousin, Bruce Riley) yells “Yankees Suck!”

Fast forward to Friday night (WS G3). This same LL team has just won a game 18-0, and this same Yankee diehard fan says to the team: "You guys are like the Red Sox. It pains me to say it, but the Red Sox are the best team in baseball, and you guys are the best team in this league."

Sidenote: this coach now always refers to my son as Mookie.
 

Rasputin

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The Red Sox still haven't lost enough World Series games this century to be eliminated from a World Series despite having played in four of them.
This team once had a 13-game post-season losing streak that spanned a decade. The last two games of '86, plus '88, '90, and '95.

Now it's 16-3 in World Series play this century.

16-3 is a 136-win pace, by the way.
 

jaytftwofive

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Jan 20, 2013
1,182
Drexel Hill Pa.
Yeah, my dad was born in 1927 and died in 2002. He followed the Sox faithfully through thick and thin. He died at age 75 without seeing a single Red Sox WS win.
I've seen four since then.
My Dad was born about 6 months after the 1918 win; he died the weekend that the Sox signed Schilling (a weekend that will live in SOSH lore forever) which means roughly 11 months before the 2004 victory.

On the flip side, this post-season was the first time that my 6-year old son had gotten into baseball on TV. He knows a lot of the players by sight, knows that Mookie is the best, and that Machado "should be kicked out of baseball for kicking that guy."

I've told this story before, but I think it's worth re-telling in the spirit of the thread, on the day of ALDS G3, at my son's baseball practice, his coach was giving a little wrap up talk to the kids after practice. Now this guy is a HUGE Yankee fan — always wears all NYY garb at every game and practice — so at the end he says: “Now go home and watch the game tonight. If your parents tell you to go to bed, you have them call me.”
So my son, calmly sitting there holding his wooden Red Sox bat (thanks to his cousin, Bruce Riley) yells “Yankees Suck!”

Fast forward to Friday night (WS G3). This same LL team has just won a game 18-0, and this same Yankee diehard fan says to the team: "You guys are like the Red Sox. It pains me to say it, but the Red Sox are the best team in baseball, and you guys are the best team in this league."

Sidenote: this coach now always refers to my son as Mookie.
Ditto, my Dad was born in 1925 and died in March of 1999. Never got to see one. I would trade all of these in if they would have won it all in 86 or 78, so he could see it. I'm sorry for all of our fathers, mothers and relatives who didn't get to see it. If there is a heaven I hope you're all watching and enjoying. This is all for you....A TOAST TO YOU!.
 

Average Reds

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Sep 24, 2007
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i can't even believe it.
I mean, it's three days later and I'm finally starting to come to grips with it.

I'll tell you when I knew they were different - back in August when they opened the month with 4 against the Yankees in Fenway. The Sox had a hot July and opened up a 5 game lead. (5.5 games as the series started.) All I was looking for - all I expected - was for them to get out of if no worse off than when they started. Instead, they cut through the Yankees like a hot knife through butter and never looked back.

They were a relentless, deep machine this year. God, this is glorious.

My kid is 26, she is a huge Sox fan, is convinced that she will marry Benintendi, and we watched the game together tonight, which was awesome. She didn't want to go to sleep because she loved watching the celebration. But the crazy thing is that she has experienced the same number of championships in her 26 years that I have in my 56. When I was growing up, I was told "it's hard to be a Red Sox fan." She told me "it's great to be a Red Sox fan."
Amen
My oldest is 26 and lives in Boston. She and I texted throughout the playoffs. Similar to your situation, she has a slightly different perspective on what it means to be a Red Sox fan than I do.

And how great is that?
 

Savin Hillbilly

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Jul 10, 2007
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The wrong side of the bridge....
My oldest is 26 and lives in Boston. She and I texted throughout the playoffs. Similar to your situation, she has a slightly different perspective on what it means to be a Red Sox fan than I do.

And how great is that?
My one child is also 26 and lives in Somerville. Growing up, he found my interest in baseball kind of amusing, that Dad-has-his-weird-obsessions kind of thing. For some reason I can't quite fathom, he got hooked this year, and started texting me notes in the middle of ballgames. I watched games 1 and 5 together with both him and my 88-year-old father, who moved here from the west coast last year. I can't even begin to express how sweet it is to share a Sox championship with those two.
 

dbn

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Feb 10, 2007
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I'm old enough to remember the dark days when the Red Sox went five years without a WS title.

This one puts them ahead of the MFY in series win-% in the WS. One more win and the Red Sox will tie PGH for the best record of any team with more than 2 appearances.
 

InsideTheParker

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Jul 15, 2005
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Amazing video. I'm always surprised by how tall Brady is hah.
I think it was 2013 when he was overheard/taped remarking to another Patriot "how tiny they are," referring to the Sox.
My favorite of that video was BROCKHOLT asking Belichick in the locker-room if he's going to put pants on. It seemed like something a six-year-old would say and (in a longer version I saw elsewhere) cracked Cora up.
 

The Gray Eagle

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Aug 1, 2001
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As of right this minute, the Boston Red Sox are still the defending World Champions.

Just want to point out that after a year that has been disappointing in many ways, that is still a fact.

To me it seems like this 2018 team never really got its due. Sure we celebrated (this thread is 2 pages long in my settings, I think other in the championship years similar threads would be ten times that) and they were celebrated, but that team demolished the competition in a season for the ages, the like of which we will probably never see again. I think they deserve more acclaim and celebration than they got.

Two months after the World Series, the Patriots were in the playoffs and on the way another Super Bowl, which took a lot of attention away from these champs, and then 2019 got off to its horrendous start. So many people had already turned on this team by early April that people on this site were actually wondering if the Red Sox would be booed on Opening Day, the day the title banner was hoisted. That is just mind-boggling, and sad.

I guess that's just the way it is now.

I don't like it. I think this team never got its proper for how great they were, at least not in a long-lasting way. That's why on a day when we are still the defending World Champions of baseball, I am going to watch some highlights and raise another toast to the 2018 Boston Red Sox, and the greatest team I've ever seen play.
 

JimD

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Nov 29, 2001
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After Houston's blown opportunity to win one of two home games to secure a second championship in three years, I think this morning is a good moment to appreciate that, when Red Sox have reached the World Series in the 21st century, they got s*** done. Four appearances, four titles, with not even the stress of a game 7 in any of those trips. As others have pointed out, their combined losses in those four years (three) isn't even enough to get eliminated once. Only the San Francisco Giants come close.

The mighty Astros have one title in three tries during this run and in all likelihood will have to replace Gerrit Cole. Theo's Cubs haven't been back to the Fall Classic after their landmark win. The Dodgers are still trying to win their first title since 1988. Aaron Judge and the other Yankees youngsters still haven't even played in a World Series.

We may have had to live through Chicken n' Beer, Bobby V., two last-places finishes and numerous bad trades and signings in the last decade, but it's still damn good to be us.
 

Earthbound64

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If Houston wins tonight, the 2018 Sox were the only thing between Houston and a 3-peat
So much for that.

We may have had to live through Chicken n' Beer, Bobby V., two last-places finishes and numerous bad trades and signings in the last decade, but it's still damn good to be us.
Damn straight.
It's been an amazing past 15 years.
 

Sam Ray Not

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Jul 19, 2005
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After Houston's blown opportunity to win one of two home games to secure a second championship in three years, I think this morning is a good moment to appreciate that, when Red Sox have reached the World Series in the 21st century, they got s*** done. Four appearances, four titles, with not even the stress of a game 7 in any of those trips. As others have pointed out, their combined losses in those four years (three) isn't even enough to get eliminated once. Only the San Francisco Giants come close.
Throw in the 20th century, and the World Series Red Sox have been absurdly beastly in the first 20 years of centuries.

• 9-0 in World Series '00-'20
• 37-13-1 in WS games
• Roadkill: Pirates, Giants, Phillies, Dodgers, Cubs, Cardinals, Rockies, Cardinals, Dodgers.

(Yeah, 0-4 in the interim, but all were tight, hard-fought seven gamers.)