For one day, I will celebrate the grand baseball tradition that is Red Sox baseball, and its long-awaited triumph. Tomorrow, I will go back to being a curmudgeonly Blue Jays fan who is starting to feel that eleven years is WAY too long to go between championships.

Some thoughts about this very brief and one-sided World Series:

I can't say that I was terribly impressed by Terry Francona as a manager during the season. But he obviously needs to be reassessed now that the Sox have won the championship. The doctors who stitched Curt Schilling's heel back together probably deserve as much credit as Francona, but to be fair, three things impressed me about Terry:

1. Publicly, he was loose and calm even after the disaster of Game Three against the Yankees. No one yelled at Dale Sveum in the dugout. From what we hear, the same was true privately.
2. Pinch running. He picked the right time to bring Dave Roberts into the game; he also resisted the temptation to take David Ortiz out of the game, a mistake that cost Ron Gardenhire dearly.
3. In Game Six, the umpires reversed two calls in his favour. Now, this may have nothing to do with Francona... but I watched around 140 baseball games this year and I don't remember a single call that was reversed in any of them. Whatever Francona was saying, it worked.

On the other hand, Francona overmanaged his bullpen, as he did all year. If Keith Foulke's arm doesn't fall off next season then he must be one hell of a durable pitcher.

With the Curse broken, many people have been quick to point out that there never was a curse. Of course there wasn't, in a mystical sense; the "Curse", as we know it, was a long series of misfortunes for the Sox organization, some of which they were responsible for, others they weren't.

The two general problems were:

1. Playing in the same league, and then the same division, as the Yankees, baseball's greatest kick-ass team
2. Playing in Fenway Park, which for 45 years badly distorted run scoring, and left Red Sox management unable to properly assess their needs and strengths. It's still a hitters' park, but structural changes in the 1970's have dampened the effect.

More specific problems were:

1. Ownership. Specifically, the Harry Frazee-Robert Quinn years. We all know that Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees so that he could finance a theatrical show, but the entire roster was gutted in the 1920's, leaving behind a pathetic team for 15 years. In addition to Ruth, ace pitchers Carl Mays and Herb Pennock also wound up with New York.
   
   Frazee sold the team in 1923, purchased by a group of investors led by Robert Quinn. But things didn't improve. From 1925-32, they had five seasons with more than 100 losses. Quinn went broke. Finally, in 1933, Tom Yawkey bought the team, and they got back onto the road to respectability.
2. War. After their recovery in the late 1930's, the Sox assembled one of the greatest young teams in baseball history. In 1942, they won 93 games, their best total since the glory years. The core group of stars (Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky) were all between 22 and 25 years old.
   
   Williams, Pesky and DiMaggio spent the next three seasons in the military. Doerr joined them in 1945. They all came back and won the pennant in 1946, losing the World Series in seven games. They slipped a bit in '47, then in 1948 finished in a first-place tie with Cleveland, and lost a one-game playoff.
   
   Then came the Casey Stengel juggernaut in New York. But the Sox were competitive; in 1949, they finished one game behind the Bombers. In 1950, Ted Williams broke his arm in the All-Star game, and missed the second half of the season; the Sox finished four games back. They began to fade, and in 1952 Williams left for Korea.
3. Racism. The Red Sox did not field their first black player until 1959; they were the last team to integrate. A year later, Ted Williams retired. They never finished higher than third after he returned from Korea.
   
   The team went from bad to worse. They lost 100 games in 1965. In 1966, fans stopped showing up to Fenway Park; the only AL teams with worse attendance than the Sox that year were (gulp) the Kansas City Athletics and the Washington Senators.
   
   Then, of course, came the Impossible Dream in 1967 that took them to the 7th game of the World Series, and laid the foundations for what is now known as Red Sox Nation (a story that's been covered in much more detail elsewhere). That team never repeated, but the fans have never left. On the field, the Sox were hurt by the horrific beaning of Tony Conigliaro, and a Jim Lonborg skiing accident; they also had to deal with the rise of Earl Weaver's awesome Orioles.
   
   They returned to the Series in 1975, again falling in seven games to a superior Reds team. Then came the first two decades of the free agency era, the greatest era of parity in baseball history. The Yankees were great for a couple of years, as were the Orioles, and the Brewers, and the Tigers, and the Royals, and the Red Sox, and the Twins, and the Athletics, and the Blue Jays, and, well, you get the idea. The Sox did just about as well as anybody else, getting within one strike of winning the Series in 1986 before the roof fell in.

As I have written earlier, I can't stand the FOX television broadcasts of playoff baseball. I'm sure there was lots to complain about in this series, but I watched the MLB International feed instead. I'm not a great Rick Sutcliffe fan and it took them awhile to show some replays, but overall the trimmed-down production was still 1000% better than FOX. And there were no interviews with anybody named Leon.

Was this the greatest Red Sox team ever? That claim was tossed around on Wednesday night. Problem is, the other five Boston champions all played before 1920, and it's tough to compare eras. Anyways, here's a start. I've listed the lineups for eight outstanding Sox teams, with their respective OPS+ and ERA+. I'm not even going to pretend that this is an adequate statistical analysis, I'm just throwing some names out. A more thorough comparison will have to wait for another day.

The 2004 team was better offensively than the 1986 team at every position except third base and right field. Defensively... neither team was blessed; Damon was almost certainly the best outfielder on either team.

Both teams tried out three different shortstops. The 2004 team eventually got things right.

The 1986 team had three top starters as good or better than the 2004 team, though Tim Wakefield outpitched fellow knuckler Al Nipper. Tom Seaver made the final 16 starts of his career for the Red Sox, and pitched well, but an ankle injury prevented him from pitching in the playoffs. Too bad he didn't have Curt Schilling's doctor.

Calvin Schiraldi pitched 50 magical innings during the regular season, and that's all I have to say about that.

1975:

Carlton Fisk broke his forearm in spring training; his replacements, Blackwell and Montgomery, were hopeless, but Pudge played like an MVP after he returned in June.

The Sox led the league in runs scored by a fairly wide margin, despite some weaknesses at third and short (where Rick Burleson was a very good defensive shortstop). Denny Doyle was a valuable midseason pickup.

Yastrzemski, Rice and Evans were all solid; Lynn was tremendous, and the Sox got outstanding production from a pair of lefties, Bernie Carbo and Cecil Cooper, in platoon roles.

The starting rotation was about average, which was all it needed to be.

1967:

The catchers could not hit at all, but the rest of the infield was solid.

Yastrzemski, the MVP and Triple Crown winner, was unbelievable. (.326 average, 44 homers, 121 RBI, 112 runs scored). Yastrzemski's statistics, at face value, are better than Manny Ramirez' 2004 numbers - and that's not even taking into account the difference between 1967 and 2004.

Reggie Smith was a solid rookie. Conigliaro was great before he was beaned in the head; his replacement, Jose Tartabull, struggled mightily.

The Sox led the league in runs scored, and also gave up a bunch of runs. Even accounting for Fenway Park, they won with their bats. Lonborg wasn't a great pitcher, but he was durable; his 273 innings led the staff by a wide margin.

John Wyatt and Sparky Lyle both provided very good bullpen support for a patchwork starting rotation.

1949:

The Sox had things backwards. Their first baseman, Billy Goodman, was a singles hitter who could hit .300 with some walks, but had no power. Their shortstop, Junior Stephens, had 39 home runs and 159 RBI.

Ted Williams hit .343 with 43 home runs, 159 RBI, 150 runs scored and 162 walks.

Tex Hughson, who won 20 games three years earlier, was in the bullpen. Their other 20-game winner from 1946, Boo Ferriss, was done. But after just three seasons, the Sox were able to find two new 20-game winners: Mel Parnell (25-7) and Ellis Kinder (23-6).

Joe Dobson was invaluable as the #3 man, as he had been in 1946.

1946:

More Ted Williams: a .342 average, 38 homers, 123 RBI, 142 runs scored, 156 walks.

Doug Mientkiewicz and Kevin Millar, meet Catfish Metkovich and Wally Moses.

1915:

Harry Hooper, oddly, had two of his worst seasons in 1912 and 1915, when the team was at its best.

Four very good starters, including a 20-year-old Babe Ruth, AND Smokey Joe Wood as a great #5 guy who made 16 starts, AND rookie Carl Mays in the bullpen? This was a good staff.

The Babe batted 92 times; he hit .315 with 10 doubles, four homers, 21 RBI, and a .576 slugging percentage.

1912:

Speaker hit .383 with 222 hits, 53 doubles, 136 runs scored, 90 RBI, 56 stolen bases. Probably his best season in a Boston uniform, if not his career.

Any time you have "H Wagner" at shortstop, you have to smile... but this was Heinie, not Honus. Still, Heinie was a good player.

Freakin' Smokey Joe Wood was 34-5 with a 1.91 ERA in 344 innings. He had a 19-game win streak during the season. And oh yeah, the other four guys were pretty good as well. The bullpen didn't get much use.

So, was this year's team the best? Tough call; I sure as heck wouldn't want to face Smokey Joe Wood in a short series. And even though the 1949 team was beaten by the Yankees, it might have beaten all the others. And this year's team had as much depth as any of them.

If forced to choose, I would take the 1915 team. Tris Speaker AND Babe Ruth? Not to mention Dutch Leonard, Ernie Shore, Rube Foster, Smokey Joe Wood, Harry Hooper, Duffy Lewis, Carl Mays (and a very young Herb Pennock)? That was one heck of a talented team.