Boston Red Sox: Most memorable games in franchise history

Red Sox win 2004 ALCS

This is the big one, probably the biggest one in Red Sox history. When the Red Sox won the 2004 ALCS, they vanquished the Yankees, exorcised all the ghosts of the past, won their first pennant in eighteen years, and avenged the heartbreak from the year before. The World Series was almost an anticlimax after this rollercoaster of a series.

After losing the 2003 ALCS in crushing fashion the previous October, the Red Sox and Yankees spent the entire season eyeing each other as the mutual hatred between the two teams grew even deeper than before. The Red Sox aborted trade for Alex Rodriguez and the Yankees subsequent acquisition of him threw gasoline onto the fire of enmity that had already burned brightly for a century.

After both teams made short work of their opponents in the ALDS, the stage was set for a rematch of epic proportions. The previous year’s ALCS between the two teams had gone to the eleventh inning of the seventh game and there was no reason to expect that the sequel would go anything less than the distance.

Imagine, then, the surprise of Red Sox fans who were stunned when the Yankees easily took a 3-0 series lead. After the 19-8 drubbing in Game Three at Fenway Park, the feeling of dread and disbelief among Red Sox fans was palpable. How could this be happening, especially because the two teams had been so evenly matched all season? Personally, I had given up all hope and told myself I was going to watch to the bitter end because I’d followed the Sox my entire life and wasn’t going to stop now.

First baseman Kevin Millar famously said “don’t let us win one game!” It seemed like a hollow proclamation of faith, but as we later learned, if there was ever a Red Sox team built to overcome adversity as great as a 3-0 deficit to the hated Yankees, it was the 2004 team.

With the Red Sox down to their last outs in Game Four, facing a ninth inning deficit and the greatest closer of all time in Mariano Rivera, they improbably won the game. Millar walked, Dave Roberts stole second, Bill Mueller drove him in, and David Ortiz hit the game-winning home run in the twelfth inning.

Game Five was another extra-innings marathon until Ortiz again won it with an RBI single in the fourteenth inning. The series then shifted to the Bronx for the final two games and as we know, the Red Sox were by then a team of destiny. Curt Schilling pitched masterfully on a hastily repaired ankle in the “Bloody Sock” Game Six, the same game when Rodriguez became a Red Sox villain by slapping the ball out of Bronson Arroyo‘s glove.

Game Seven? It was never close as Johnny Damon hit a second inning grand slam and a two-run homer in the fourth and the Red Sox routed the Yankees to finally beat them in the postseason and win the pennant.

The jubilation across Red Sox Nation was so great that the World Series was almost an afterthought. Facing a powerful St. Louis Cardinals team, the Red Sox never slowed their roll and swept the series to finally end eighty-six years of futility and heartache.

While winning the World Series was always the ultimate goal, ask any Red Sox fan and they’ll tell you that winning the 2004 ALCS was the best thing that the team ever did. I share that belief.