On October 26, 2004, the Boston Red Sox Completed a Sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals to Win Their First World Series Title in 86 Years

On October 26, 2004, the Boston Red Sox took the field at Busch Stadium in St. Louis carrying eight decades of accumulated heartbreak, near-misses, and a curse blamed on the sale of Babe Ruth. By the time the night ended, none of it mattered anymore. A 3-0 win over the Cardinals completed a four-game sweep and delivered Boston its first championship since 1918, closing out one of the most improbable postseason runs in baseball history just weeks after the team had trailed the Yankees three games to none in the ALCS.

The Long Wait Ends

Manager Terry Francona's club had already made history two weeks earlier, becoming the first team in Major League Baseball postseason play to overcome a 3-0 series deficit, doing it against their bitter rivals from New York no less. That comeback carried an almost mythic momentum into the World Series, where the Red Sox never trailed the Cardinals for a single inning across all four games. Derek Lowe pitched seven scoreless innings in the clincher, backed by a lineup that had bulldozed St. Louis's league-best offense into submission. Boston's pitching staff, anchored by a rotation that included Curt Schilling's now-legendary bloody sock outing, allowed the Cardinals to look outmatched at every turn, a stunning role reversal for a franchise so long defined by late-inning collapse.

When closer Keith Foulke fielded a soft grounder from Edgar Renteria and threw to first for the final out, players poured off the bench and a city eighty-six years removed from its last parade finally got to plan one. Fans who had inherited the disappointment from parents and grandparents, who had absorbed 1946, 1967, 1975, and 1986 as folklore rather than memory, watched the Red Sox hoist the Commissioner's Trophy on a stage that felt less like triumph and more like overdue correction. The so-called Curse of the Bambino, invoked for generations to explain every Boston collapse, was finally, officially retired, a punchline turned into a footnote.