10/21/2004 05:31:31 PM|||Nathan Moore|||

How big is it really? I go on record saying it's the biggest comeback achievement in the history of sports.

No team has ever come back to tie a series after going down 3-0 in a 7 game series.

No team has ever come to win a series after going down 3-0 in a 7 games series.

And of course, no team has ever done either while visiting Yankee Stadium, two games straight...after losing Game 3 by 11 runs. They were done. Then they faced the best closer in post-season history.

So the logical conclusion is that the greatest comeback in history also witnesses the most significant collapse in sports history. Before last night, I was of the opinion that Maryland's loss to Duke in 2001, dropping a ten point lead in 54 seconds, was the biggest comeback in sports history. I have a new number one. (My Sarah, a big time Maryland alum, was glad to hear it).

If you're a sports fan, you get it. No one has ever done what Boston did, and could have never hoped to do so with such flair. Losing their first game at home in game three, down 3-0, Boston looked like they were done. Two extra inning wins at home gave them the chance, just the chance, to play again in New York, the House that Ruth Built, the home of The Curse. Conventional wisdom still said they'd lose. But hope is not conventional, and the fans of the Boston Red Sox are not mere mortals. Heartache has known no home more comforting than Boston, and this was as long a shot as any to change that address. But the long shot became reality. In over 100 years of baseball, the club from Boston did what could not be done. Nothing could be so fitting.

But they did it.

Twice in New York.

And the sports world will always look back on this series, and this team, whether they win the World Series or not, and stand in awe. The thoughts, to me, are still sinking in. The Curse has been broken. The curse was a Yankee creation, not a baseball creation. The Yankees have, for all their past glory, suffered two significant embarrassments in two years - being swept by the Marlins in the World Series last year, and defeat in a way never seen before by the Boston Red Sox this year. Before yesterday, what the Red Sox did was considered, well, impossible.

The Babe was looking down, guiding the flow of the game, and he decided enough was enough. I don't like to believe in such things as curses, but no team should have done what Boston did. Maybe, just maybe, the Babe forgave, and changed his mind. The Curse is over - the Red Sox are back. Watch tonight's NLCS game tonight, but know, as I do, that whoever wins, it doesn't matter.

|||109839902539113639|||The Sox