By Thomas Boswell
Tuesday, October 30, 2007

DENVER

As the Red Sox celebrated on the Rockies' infield on Sunday night, thousands of Boston fans, far from home, filled the lower stands of Coors Field, chanting in unison. (Who coaches these people anyway?) They incanted the names of heroes ("Jon-ny Les-ter"), insulted Alex Rodriguez ("Don't sign A-Rod") and begged their brass to re-sign favored stars ("Bring Back Lo-well").

But one homemade sign in the midst of the throng summed up this baseball postseason: "Red Sox Domi-Nation."

That's where we are now. It's a disorienting development to many lifelong fans, like me, for whom the Red Sox' collective personality -- that dysfunction deep in their franchise DNA -- has been an unvarying plotline linking all of baseball's decades. Sure, the Curse was reversed in '04 and it may take baseball a generation to produce another story that good. But as recently as 14 days ago, when Boston lost back-to-back games to journeymen Jake Westbrook and Paul Byrd to fall behind Cleveland, three games to one in the ALCS, it seemed that not every Red Sox demon had been slain. Was '04 an Idiot fluke, a season of epochal forgiveness, a once-in-a-lifetime sports miracle, but not really part of a new age?

Now, a new era has officially begun in baseball. In the last month, it's become too clear to deny. The Red Sox, not the Yankees, led baseball in road attendance this season. More people want to see Manny being Manny, Papelbon doing his Riverdance prance, Dice-K swiveling his hips for a Gyroball, Big Papi slugging and hugging, plus all those rookies named Pedroia, Ellsbury and Buchholz, than want to pay to watch the worn-out, pathetic dregs of the Yankees' all-star circus.

The center of gravity in baseball is now Fenway Park, not Yankee Stadium. And that is good, very good for baseball. Seriously, Babe Ruth came to New York in 1920. That's long enough for one team to hog the spotlight, isn't it?

Some people around baseball have gotten the bizarre idea this month that -- with Joe Torre gone, Alex Rodriguez as good as gone and others, including Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera, no better than 50-50 to return to the Bronx -- that the Red Sox are somehow "the new Yankees." You know, the team to be hated by right-thinking fans simply because Boston has a $143 million budget.

Let's not go nuts here. Two World Series wins in four seasons do not mean that it's time for an off-Broadway production of "Damn Red Sox." Let's enjoy what we've got, appreciate what we've just seen, rather than rush -- a peculiarly 21st-century disease -- to discredit what we have just praised within, oh, 72 hours. In time, no doubt, the Red Sox will become an old tired story, too. My vision on that is 20-20, so to speak, since I figure this Theo Epstein kid will run out of ideas by about 2020.

Make no mistake, the Red Sox are going to need plenty of good ideas, and soon, to stay where they are. Boston is rightfully proud of its handful of homegrown young prospects. It's the Red Sox' badge of honor that they haven't just bought a title. But for every under-30 Kevin Youkilis or Josh Beckett, Boston has several core players who are ancient: Curt Schilling (40), 17-game winner Tim Wakefield (41), Mike Timlin (41), Jason Varitek (35, old for a catcher).

As magnificent as Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz and Mike Lowell are right now in the heart of the order, they aren't young. Ortiz limps and the invaluable Lowell, the World Series MVP, is a free agent. The Yankees will soon come calling on Lowell now that A-Rod realizes his natural home is Los Angeles, where winning isn't everything, but looking good while losing is. Red Sox fans should remind Lowell that he's a baseball archetype: the Fenway Hitter. He's good everywhere. But at Fenway, and Fenway alone, he's been a true star, hitting .316 with 26 homers and 122 RBI in 611 at-bats. At 33, it's a forgiving place to grow old.

Before this World Series, I mentioned how few World Series have been duds since Carlton Fisk hit his foul-pole homer in '75. But that is changing. And baseball should start to be concerned. Three of the last four World Series have been sweeps, while the other was the Cards' win in five games in '06. The sweeps by the Red Sox and White Sox were easy to swallow. If the drama was scant, the history was sublime with those champions breaking droughts of 86 and 88 years between World Series wins. And the Cards' victory last year was a major upset by an injured, scrappy and nationally popular team.

But ugly October patterns are emerging. The American League has become too superior for the World Series' good. The AL has swept five of the last 10 World Series and the overall superiority, 34-16 in games, is embarrassing. Baseball can't control the relative strength of its leagues. But the game must realize that, when competition seems imbalanced, fans simply will not tolerate a postseason filled with games that average more than 3 1/2 hours.

Game 3 took 4 hours 14 minutes, the longest nine-inning game in World Series history. Game 2 of the ALCS, however, is the poster child for everything that is wrong with lugubrious, self-indulgent October baseball. The Indians and Red Sox required 5 hours 14 minutes to play 11 innings. I watched two hours of the game during a layover in Minneapolis, left in the sixth inning to fly to Green Bay to cover the Redskins, got to my hotel room, turned on the TV for a final score and, voila, the game was only in the 10th inning. By the time Cleveland scored seven runs in the 11th, I was happily asleep.

Baseball purists say that games now start too late at night for children to watch. So, how will the sport cultivate new fans? I say that baseball is lucky the games are too late for kids. Children see the tolerable 2:45 version of the sport during the regular season. It's better they aren't exposed to the virtually unwatchable October games that average almost an hour longer.

Baseball's biggest problem isn't steroids. With tougher drug-testing rules and enforcement, that will pass. The game can cope with high salaries thanks to increased revenue sharing and new revenue streams. Even high ticket prices can't stop the sport from setting new attendance records year after year. Gorgeous new ballpark palaces make people want to pay the freight. The quality of play on the field is excellent. The balance between offense and defense, while still tilted too far toward offense, is tolerable.

However, time-of-game, which is still too long during the regular season, is an absolute killer in October. To watch games of this length, you don't have to be a fan, you have to be a certifiable fanatic. And it is a problem that can be cured. The few minutes added to postseason games by long and lucrative commercials is not the problem. Every business has to make a buck.

The problem is the players. The pressure of playoff baseball freezes them. They don't realize it, but almost everybody moves in slow motion between pitches. The reason is simple. Every innocuous at-bat, from the first pitch of the game, is filled with such intensity in the players' minds that they react as if it is the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, game on the line.

This simply can't be allowed to continue. It's killing the sport's showcase month. Umpires are the only cure; but, luckily, they're also the perfect instruments for the remedy. With the threat of calling a ball on a dawdling pitcher or a strike on a human-rain-delay hitter, they have more than enough muscle to cut 30 minutes off the current obscene length of October games.

When Jonathan Papelbon, aided by the thin Denver air, broke Tug McGraw's 27-year-old record for highest celebratory glove throw in victory, it was 12:05 a.m. back in Boston, thanks to an entirely typical postseason game that took 3:35.

No doubt every breathing member of Red Sox Nation was still awake to watch. But, baseball needs to ask, who else was?