With 4 Home Runs, Including One Grand Slam, the Red Sox Eliminate the Yankees with a 10-3 Victory in Game 7 of the A.L.C.S.!

'Nuff Said!

But, no, I can't leave it at that. Words truly escape me, but to quote Katagiri Roshi, "You have to say something." But what can I say?

I moved to Boston in 1975, and saw the Red Sox come from behind to tie the World Series up at three games each, only to lose to the Reds in Game 7. In 1978, I saw Bucky Dent's home run end the Sox' season in a one-game playoff. By 1986, I no longer lived in Boston, but still watched with horror as Bill Buckner's notorious 10th-inning error cost the Sox Game 6 of the World Series, and then saw the Mets go on and win Game 7. And then there was Game 7 of the ALCS a year ago. When David Ortiz hit a homer, I thought, "That's it. We can't lose now." And them along comes Aaron Boone . . .

1918. Bucky, Buckner and Boone. What a legacy. But still I cheered for the Sox.

Bob Ryan put it well in today's Boston Globe: "What they did as a group will now be toasted and recounted for decades to come, and it should be. What we just saw was a tribute to 25 athletes and a coaching staff that refused to acknowledge a 100-year history. Baseball teams don't come back from being down, 3-0, they were told. They didn't buy into it.

"The week of baseball they gave us would have been phenomenal under any circumstances, but when you're the Red Sox playing the Yankees, it is never a normal circumstance. To come within three outs of being swept in Game 4, to persevere in that extraordinary 14-inning Game 5, to receive the kind of gritty pitching they got from Schilling in Game 6, and then to put everything together in spectacular fashion in Game 7, and to do it all against the Yankees, was an off-the-charts display of class and determination.

"One year ago the Red Sox lost a traumatic Game 7 in this very park. It was talked about incessantly. Last Saturday night, the team lost a 19-8 game in Fenway. It was another frustrating chapter in the great Yankee-Red Sox drama. Elimination was imminent. The entire relationship between the Red Sox and their greatest rival seemed fated to remain an endlessly repetitious story in which the dynamics would never change. Call it Groundhog Day. Call it Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. Call it Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill. They all apply. Down, 3-0, and having been humiliated in their own park (19 and 22 hits), the Red Sox were regarded as toe-tag material -- again.

"There was only one place on earth where there was any hope, and that was inside the Red Sox clubhouse. The single most alternatingly stressful and exhilarating week in Boston sports history is over. I need a beer."