"The Most Unadulterated, Disbelieving, Decades-Overdue Fun". Two of Thomas Boswell's recent Washington Post columns have been extraordinary. Read them here and here. In the first link, Boswell observes that "the Red Sox [stole] the pennant from the Yankees not once but four times within 72 heart-stopping hours."

What a beautiful sentence.

The Red Sox stole the pennant from the Yankees not once but four times within 72 heart-stopping hours.

Wow.

He also wrote this after Game 6: "If the Red Sox, the team synonymous with collapses, misfortune and despair, win Game 7, then, in a blink, the blackest mark in Yankees history will actually be darker than any disgrace in all Boston annals. ... [I]t is the Yankees, not the "cursed" Red Sox, who have a chance for the worst October collapse in history." This will never get old.

Today's Boswell, which also includes his prediction: "The Boston rotation entering the World Series is typical of life in Red Sox land. In the ALCS, Derek Lowe was demoted to the bullpen so Bronson Arroyo could start against the Yankees until Arroyo got knocked out early and Tim Wakefield volunteered to pitch long relief, which forced Lowe to get a start that worked out so well that Wakefield stayed in the bullpen along with Arroyo and now, because Schilling limps, Pedro Martinez needs more rest and Lowe just won the pennant, Wakefield will start Game 1 of the Series. See how easy it is to run the Red Sox? One day this winter, Theo Epstein is going to wake up and look 90."

My blog and Singapore Sox Fan were mentioned in USAToday on Friday. ... Johnny Damon after David Ortiz won Game 5 with a 14th inning single: "Hopefully he'll have six more great games and they'll make a monument of him." ... Not many people know this, but there is already one in Manhattan.

2004 is really my first Red Sox pennant. I was only 11 years old in 1975 and while I do remember some of the World Series (Looie Tiant in Game 1 and Fred Lynn hitting the wall in Game 6 (I must have been in bed when Fisk homered, I have no memory of it)), I certainly wasn't a fan. Though by the time 1976 rolled around, I was hooked.

And in the early eighties, I had drifted away from baseball for a few years. I came back to the Red Sox late in the summer of 1986 and once the playoffs started, I was as rabid as I had been in the late 1970s. But I hadn't followed the team the entire year. ... So 2004 is the first pennant I've been a part of in the obsessive way I feel is necessary. No great significance to that -- I'm just saying.

Hey -- you know what?

The Red Sox stole the pennant from the Yankees not once but four times within 72 heart-stopping hours.

And now it's Wakefield/Williams at 8:00 pm.