01:00 AM EDT on Friday, October 29, 2004

ST. LOUIS -- They'd been waiting 86 years, so it was understandable that the Boston Red Sox and their devoted, deliriously happy fans were in no hurry to leave Busch Stadium after winning their first World Series since 1918.

If ever there was moment to be savored, to be seized, to be relished, to be remembered, to be embraced with all the emotional fervor pent up through a Red Sox fan's lifetime of frustration, disappointment and heartbreak, this was it.

The Red Sox won the World Series!

And in four straight games. Eight, in a way, since the Sox made baseball history by rallying from three games down to the Yankees in the ALCS, sweeping the final four from New York, including the last two on the hallowed turf of Yankee Stadium, the House That Ruth Built -- after he was sold by the Red Sox following the 1919 season.

That comeback was very much on the minds of the Sox Wednesday night, before Game Four.

"I was talking to some of the guys," said Series MVP Manny Ramirez, "and I said: 'Hey, let's go. Don't let those guys breathe.' We know what happened against New York. We came back. In baseball, anything can happen."

Red Sox fans know all too well that anything can, indeed, happen.

Boston was one strike away from a championship -- not one game, not one inning, not even one out, but one, single, solitary strike -- in Game Six of the 1986 World Series against the Mets, but wound up losing in seven games.

That was the last time the Red Sox had won the pennant, which had seemed almost in their grasp last season, when they led the Yankees, 5-2, in the eighth inning of Game Seven of the ALCS at Yankee Stadium, only to lose in extra innings.

So this time, when the Sox, losers in their last four World Series appearances, all in seven games, came through -- when Johnny Damon got them going with a leadoff home run, and Trot Nixon pounded three doubles, one of which drove in two runs; when Derek Lowe pitched seven innings of three-hit, shutout ball, and Alan Embree and Keith Foulke came out of the bullpen to preserve Boston's 3-0 shutout victory and the Series sweep -- that's when the celebration began.

And continued well into the night.

Thousands of fans gathered behind the Boston dugout after the game, cheering and chanting as one player after another emerged from the raucous Red Sox clubhouse, soaked in champagne, and shared their joy with the crowd.

Players hugged one another. They waved to the crowd, which shouted their names. Relief pitcher Mike Myers ran along the top of the dugout, high-fiving everyone he could reach.

It was a delightfully spontaneous display of exuberance and enthusiasm, and it just kept on going and going and going because no one wanted it to end.

Because, after all, they'd been waiting 86 years.

Many of those fans were still there more than an hour later, when, at 11:57 p.m., Pedro Martinez, cap backward, cavorted up and down in front of the stands along the third-base line holding the championship trophy above his head, a huge smile on his face, like a kid at Christmas eager to show everyone the present he'd always dreamed of getting.

Then, at the stroke of midnight, when the most memorable day in the history of the Boston Red Sox came to an end, Les Otten, one of the team's minority owners, went running -- not jogging, not trotting, but running, in an adrenalin-driven burst of energy and esctasy -- around the bases, finishing his celebratory circuit by jumping for joy on home plate.

Which, it's worth pointing out, meant Otten had more contact with home plate Wednesday night than the entire St. Louis Cardinals team.

While Otten was circling the bases, Theo Epstein, Boston's 30-year-old wunderkind of a general manager was being interviewed on television.

As he stood in the glare of the TV lights in his championship T-shirt soaking wet, the appreciative Red Sox fans chanted: "Thank you, Theo! Thank you, Theo!"

It was truly a night for Red Sox Nation to give heartfelt thanks.

The unusually-talented bunch of truly unusual characters assembled by Epstein had brought a world championship to Boston.

"This is a unique group of guys," Lowe said. "It's the most laidback group of guys I've ever played with."

Epstein brilliantly summed up their achievement in a single sentence.

"After this," he said, "1918 is now just another year that we won the World Series."

Certainly, it won't be another 86 years 'til Boston's next championship. There's no reason the Red Sox can't repeat next year.

But no matter how many World Series the Sox win in years to come, it is this year -- 2004 -- that will be brought up whenever anyone talks about the Red Sox.

Like the celebration after Game Four, Red Sox fans wish it could go on forever.

It can't, of course. But it will, happily, be remembered forever.