We’re narrative creatures, and as a species we tend to look for turning points, plot twists, smoking guns – even, sometimes, when they’re not really there. Cardinal fans will no doubt look back on the Suppan Surprise or the called strike on Edmonds and say that was the difference-maker. That's why we lost! John Kruk went so far as to say the whole series turned in the third inning of Game 1, when Orlando Cabrera threw that high elbow at Tony Womack. Never mind that the Cardinals outscored the Sox for the rest of the game, in Kruk’s mind that one action had the Cards so scared that they went down like lambs in four straight. But this kindergarten fable ignores all the big “macro” ways in which the Red Sox won.

I guess what I’m trying to say, then, is that the Sox weren’t cursed these past 86 years so much as they didn’t deserve to win. There were really only three years in that stretch – 1946, 1978, and 2003 – where I think you could make a plausible case that the Red Sox were the best team in baseball, and even in those years I think the better team won (not much better, but better all the same). But this year the Sox were the best team in baseball. They earned their win. They weren’t the beneficiary of some lifted curse.