BOSTON - For much of the 20th century, the Boston Red Sox were a symbol of frustration and pain for an entire region. As popular as they were in their corner of the nation, either they were good enough to lose in agonizing fashion on baseball's grandest stage, or they were just plain bad.
But that all changed in 2004 when the Red Sox ended an 86-year championship drought, and now their fortunes have changed so dramatically that winning titles has become commonplace.
The latest victory came Wednesday night, when the Red Sox beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-1, in Game 6 of the World Series to take the series, four games to two. They earned the third jewel in their championship crown over the last 10 years, and their eighth over all.
In addition, for the first time since 1918, Boston was able to celebrate the victory at home, winning in front of an announced crowd of 38,447 at Fenway Park and many thousands more who crammed the city streets and bars to proclaim those formerly scarce words that are now often repeated: The Boston Red Sox won the World Series.
Even after the team's horrendous late-season collapse in 2001 and a last-place finish in 2012, Red Sox fans have become so accustomed to winning that, once their scruffy team had won Game 5, Game 6 had an air of inevitability.
By the time Boston had taken a 6-0 lead in the fourth inning, the cool air at Fenway Park vibrated in anticipation of the party that would soon follow.
David Ortiz, whose contributions to the Red Sox' last three championships cannot be overstated, was named the most valuable player of the series. He hit two home runs, knocked in six runs, scored seven more, batted .688 and had a staggering .760 on-base percentage.
The Cardinals finally wised up in Game 6, walking him four times, three times intentionally: it was the only way to prevent him from doing damage.
Two Red Sox hitters with little success in the first five games came through instead.
Shane Victorino drove in four runs, with a bases-clearing double in the third inning and a run-scoring single in the fourth, an inning that began with a home run by Stephen Drew against Michael Wacha. Drew had batted .080 this postseason entering the game.
Wacha, a 22-year-old rookie, had been unbeaten in the postseason and had not even allowed a hit with runners in scoring position. But he was charged with six runs in only three and two-thirds innings Wednesday. Red Sox starter John Lackey scrapped and battled his way through six and two-thirds inning to earn the win.
The victory was the second in a World Series clincher of Lackey's career. He also won Game 7 of the 2002 World Series, for the Anaheim Angels.
Lackey looked beatable as the Cardinals hit several balls hard in the first two innings. But the Red Sox had fielders in place to catch most of them, and Lackey grew stingier until the seventh.
The Cardinals, trailing by 6-0, scored a run in that inning and then had runners at first and third with two outs. With Matt Holliday coming to the plate, Red Sox Manager John Farrell emerged from the dugout. As he strolled to the mound, though, Lackey gave him a stern look and appeared to say, "This is my guy," as well as a few words obscured behind his glove.
Farrell left him in, but Lackey walked Holliday, so Junichi Tazawa was summoned from the bullpen. Tazawa got Allen Craig to ground to first, eliciting a roar from the fans.
Victorino, who had missed the previous two games because of back spasms, gave the Red Sox an early 3-0 lead with his double, pounding his chest just as he did in the Red Sox' pennant-clinching game against the Detroit Tigers, when he hit a decisive grand slam.
From there, the Red Sox were simply too good for St. Louis once again.
In 2004, the Red Sox swept the Cardinals, winning Game 4 in St. Louis, and in 2007, they swept the Colorado Rockies, taking the final game in Denver. The Red Sox had lost in excruciating fashion in their four previous World Series appearances, in 1946 and 1967 to the Cardinals, in 1975 to the Cincinnati Reds and in 1986 to the Mets, each time in seven games.
For decades it seemed as if 1918 would remain their last title, especially with the mighty Yankees putting up road blocks in their league and division.
But along came Ortiz, who helped erase the Red Sox' jinx against the Yankees in 2004 and carry Boston over a barrier it had been unable to cross for 86 years.
What made this year's title even more notable was that the Red Sox completed a worst-to-first transformation, rebounding from a last-place finish in the American League East in 2012, shedding a negative reputation and replacing it with scruffy beards to signify team unity.
The team brought in Farrell to replace Bobby Valentine and several new players, including Victorino, Drew, Mike Napoli, Jonny Gomes and closer Koji Uehara, to change the toxic culture of the clubhouse.
But the team also featured four key players from the 2007 team: Ortiz; Jon Lester, who went 2-0 in the Series; Jacoby Ellsbury; and Dustin Pedroia, who said that despite the misery of 2012, and even the late-season collapse of 2011, he still felt this team had the potential to win again.
"Yeah, my expectations of our team didn't change from last spring training to this one," he said before Wednesday's game. "Your goal playing for the Red Sox every year is to try to be at this point and win the World Series. Next year we're going to come in, and our goal is to win the World Series, and that's never going to change here."
For 86 years, that goal was unattainable. Now it is almost routine.
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