NEW YORK
What have the Red Sox wrought? And where does it stand?
In the constant attempt to pronounce the latest remarkable event of the day as the greatest in the annals of everything, is it possible to weigh the sports equivalent of a miracle?
For a frame of reference, let's limit ourselves to the last 30 baseball seasons. That's a generation. It begins with Carlton Fisk's foul pole homer in the 1975 World Series that re-ignited interest in baseball after a dormant decade.
To sense how special, exhilarating, exhausting and historic this American League Championship Series was, let's start with a short list of thrilling events that don't come close to making the cut in comparison. For example, the famous October home runs of Fisk, Dave Henderson ('86) and Joe Carter ('93), the gaffes of Grady Little and Steve Bartman last season, the World Series upsets by the '85 Royals, '88 Dodgers and '90 Reds, don't even make the radar screen.
The eras of the Big Red Machine, Bash Brothers and Joe Torre's Yankees three-peaters never hit the baseball nation with an event of comparable force. The worst-to-first Twins of '91 and wild-card Marlins champs of '97 and '03 don't even move the meter. We're in the high country now, far above the frost line.
To what do we compare the Red Sox feat of becoming -- repeat after me, like the pledge of allegiance -- "the first team in 101 years of postseason baseball to win after falling behind three games to none."
The best single game of the last 30 years was the 1978 AL East playoff, now known as simply the Bucky F. Dent game. That game elevated the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, which had simmered, then boiled for 50 years, from lore to American mythology. It's place in lore is so great that the Yankees, perhaps in a desperate gesture, had Dent throw out the ceremonial first ball on Wednesday night.
The best postseason series of our period -- and probably ever -- was the '01 World Series. In the span of seven games, we saw three masterpieces that would be included in any list of the top 15 games ever played. Tino Martinez and Scott Brosius hit down-to-the-last-out homers at Yankee Stadium to avoid defeats as the tattered 9/11 World Trade Center flag flew over center field. Then the Diamondbacks scored two runs in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 to win 3-2. The karma associated with that series is so great that the centerpiece of the Red Sox "This Really Is the Year" quest was to trade for Curt Schilling, who dominated the Yankees in three starts in that Series and mocked their "Aura and Mystique" as cheap nightclub table dancers.
See how the thematic threads, not just of recent years but recent decades, tied together in this week's drama?
The worst self-inflicted collapse in the most mournful World Series of our time was Bill Buckner's error in 1986. That disaster gave pop-culture currency to baseball curses, which have been a cottage industry since. The Cubs, losers in everything, even drummed up a fake curse about a goat that nobody remembers just so they wouldn't feel left out.
So, if the best game, best series and worst collapse are all spoken for, then what have we just seen in this monstrously moving ALCS in which four of the last five games ended after midnight and the other was the longest postseason game ever played?
For starters, Games 4 and 5 are an utterly unique best of breed. On Oct. 18, Boston won twice on the same calendar day -- at 1:23 a.m. and 11:01 p.m. -- both times after blown saves by Mariano Rivera and both games ending on game-ending hits by David Ortiz in the 12th and 14th innings. That certainly constitutes the best two postseason games ever decided on the same day.
As a bonus, every other game in this ALCS provided a superb story even when it wasn't a heart-stopping game. The heroes of Games 1 and 6 -- Rivera and Schilling -- showed singular fortitude, one with his emotional strength and the other with physical determination. And Game 3's 19-8 Yankees slaughter at Fenway Park, which demolished a novella-length list of offensive records, made a perfect bookend for Johnny Damon's ghost-slaying grand slam in Game 7.
