Four Days in October: Which ‘04 LCS game was your favorite?

This is like asking the parent who their favorite kid is, I could pick each of those games.

The tension going into each game was uniquely immense on it's own (well, at least for games 4, 6, and 7), let alone collectively in 4 nights. We went from "don't get swept" to the "knuckleball extra inning drip torture" to "what are we even going to get from Schilling" to "OMG just please don't lose another game 7" (and at this moment we didn't realize good-Lowe was back).

Game 4 and 5 tension built up over the game, game 6 was tense the entire game, and game 7 started tense and then was like a balloon slowly letting out air. I felt good after the Damon grand slam, finally exhaled when he hit his next home run, then got annoyed when Tito unnecessary put in Pedro and got the crowd back into it, and then Timlin closed the door.

I still can't pick a game, I'm going to have to sleep on it. I'm looking forward to re-watching that 30-for-30 again.

Like others, I think it’s a really hard thing to pick just one. I chose game seven just because it changed everything in being a Sox fan for me. I am a diehard Dolphins fan also. Between those two teams, there wasn’t a whole lot of celebrating for me in my youth, though I did watch back to back SB wins when I was six and seven.

The 2004 Sox team provided an emotional release that is not easy to describe.

I picked Game 5, because that's when I really felt this might actually be a possibility. To get to Rivera a second time, to have Papi confirm he's just a full on beast, it started to just maybe kinda feel like a Team of Destiny.

But game 4's "We'll see you later tonight!" still gives me chills. Definitely gonna miss Joe Buck on big games.

That 8th inning was fun. Fenway was rocking. I remember Manny hit into a killer DP to end the 7th and then the Yankees put an insurance run on 3b with one out but Timlin fanned A-Rod and eventually Foulke retired Matsui (I think) to end the threat.

Then just like that Ortiz smashed a HR off the Volvo sign to make it 4-3 off Tom Gordon and then after going 0-2 on Millar, Gordon lost him and walked him and Fenway really started rocking with every successive pitch.

Gordon's nerves were frazzled and the last thing he needed to see was Dave Roberts come in to pinch-run.

He really came unglued at that point. It took him like ten years in between pitches. I remember McCarver saying something like "it's like watching the same movie two nights in a row". I remember Buck saying that "Roberts is dug in and ready to run on every pitch. All that's missing is the starting blocks". And I remember Al Leiter saying "Clearly Roberts is in Gordon's head". It was obvious he couldn't concentrate on Trot Nixon with Dave Roberts distracting him so damn much. And with each successive pitch Fenway was growing increasingly louder.

Then Roberts finally took off and good thing he did because otherwise he wouldn't have made it to 3b on Trot Nixon's hard hit base hit into right center.

So Kapler pinch ran for Nixon and Rivera entered the game...and pitched well. I mean the guy inherited a 1st and 3rd with no out situation and would have had to have pulled a Houdini to escape.

I guess you can say Rivera's only "mistake" was falling behind Varitek 2-0 and having to come in with a pitch which he did and Tek lofted a routine fly ball to Bernie Williams in CF, but with Williams' rag arm, he had no shot at cutting down Roberts, who scored the tying run.

The rally died there because Rivera was Rivera. I mean, he is seen as one of the goats of the series, but the man gave up 1, count em, 1 ER in 7 innings pitched. It's just that the one run came at the wrong time - in Game 4 when he could have closed out the series, and the second blown save is really an unfair mark against Rivera.

Then I remember the lucky hop into the stands as if the ball almost climbed the RF wall. It prevented Sierra from easily scoring the go ahead run in the 9th.

And the 13rd inning was terrifying - 3 passed balls by Varitek trying to catch Wakefield, and then Wakefield striking out Sierra on a 3-2 knuckler that Tek thankfully squeezed.

And when it go to the 14th if Ortiz didn't get that epic bloop hit, they would have gone to the 15th with them pressing their luck further by having to go to a sore armed Leskanic for a 3rd straight day for the 15th inning. Instead there couldn't have been a more timely hit for the Sox (well except for Mueller's Game 4 9th inning single).

And of course in the early morning hours prior to Game 5 we watched the Sox survive, the dramatic 9th inning rally, the Red Sox squirting out a bases loaded jam in the 11th inning in which Cabrera made a nice diving catch off the bat of A-Rod which kept the Yankees from scoring and is largely forgotten, and that with the bases loaded and two outs, Curtis Leskanic came on to retire Bernie Williams on a fly to Damon. The next inning with a runner on 2nd and one out, he retired the final two batters....and never pitched ever again, and was rewarded with the victory when Ortiz took Quantrill deep with Manny aboard.

Then there was the nerve wracking 6th game where Schilling had his finest hours and gutted out 7 innings and all 4 Sox runs came in the 4th with 2 outs and nobody on and an 0-2 count to Millar. That's when Bellhorn's bat awoke...and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he is the only Red Sox player to homer in 3 consecutive post-season games (within the same post-season)? I don't think Ortiz ever did and I don't think Kiké Hernandez did that?

But that 8th and 9th inning of Game 6 was so scary between the slap play and a clearly tired and diminished Keith Foulke somehow getting a swinging strike 3 against Tony Clark with a full count and the tying runs on base and the winning run at the plate. I almost fell off my bed watching that final strike (like I had a year earlier when Derek Lowe threw those amazing inside breaking pitches to Terrence Long to snuff out the A's in the decisive 5th game of the 2003 ALDS).

The thing that was nice about Game 7 is how stress free it was once Ortiz hit the 2 run HR and Damon hit the grand slam and then followed up with a 2 run HR to make it 8-1. Watching Pedro in relief was a bit scary, but once Bellhorn rang the foul pole, it made a sound that reverberated that says, "School is out Yankees fans. You can go home now". Which they did and eventually Embree got the last out for Timlin, retiring Sierra with a grounder to Pokey Reese at 2b who threw to Doug Mientkiewicz at 1b.

Like I said before....epic. Like it was said earlier by foreverred9, it really is like picking between your children.

Me, too....even when Renteria came to the plate. What stunned me was how fast that final out came. I thought it would be like a 10 pitch AB or a couple of more guys would get on, etc.

Instead it was ball one, Pujols takes second uncontested, and then an 89 MPH fastball (I guess) that Renteria chops on the ground to Foulke who bobbles it momentarily in his glove, then secures it, gets ready to toss the ball to Mientkiewicz...and then decides to run a couple of more steps toward 1b, and then underhands to Mientkiewicz....and I remember feeling stunned and wondering, "Is that all there is? Is that all it takes to win the Series? That easy?" Which were thoughts I never thought I'd be thinking after waiting my entire life (thankfully I was only 30 at the time).

I was still very much scarred by that 1986 World Series (even when Kinsler screwed up that last out of Game 3 of the 2018 World Series it unleashed all those awful memories of being 1 out away in 1986).

Honestly I was in a daze after they won. I remember spending a half hour after Adam Vinatieri split the uprights in Super Bowl XXXVI saying, "The Patriots won the Super Bowl. The Patriots won the Super Bowl? The New England Patriots won the super bowl?" as if it were a foreign concept...at that point the Patriots were laughing stocks, having played in 2 super bowls, one in which they were massacred by the Bears and a few days later the major drug issues on the team were made public, and the other in which they lost by a couple of touchdowns but nobody cared or noticed because all anybody could talk about was that their coach Parcells was leaving irregardless.

So when the Sox won, it didn't really register for an hour. It only sunk in when I saw ESPN put up the familary graphic:

Longest World Series Drought:

Chicago Cubs 1908
Chicago White Sox 1917
Boston Red Sox 1918

Or at least that's what my brain thought I saw.

Then my eyes looked closer:

Chicago Cubs 1908
Chicago White Sox 1917
Cleveland Indians 1948

Then I momentarily wondered, "why aren't the Red Sox on that list?"

Then my brained screamed out, "Because they won the F'NG World Series! - that's why!! They'll never be on that list in your lifetime ever again!!!!"

Then it became souvenir time in my mind because it had finally sunk in that our Red Sox had become World Champions...and I have an awesome hobby room that commemorates those four World Championships (along with the other 5) among other great Red Sox (and Patriots) moments (along with nods to the UCONN Huskies basketball teams, Boston Celtics, Boston Bruins, and Hartford Whalers).