So long, curse; bye-bye, Bambino and Bucky and Boone; you're history, 1918; the Red Sox open the season as baseball's defending champions

01:00 AM EST on Saturday, April 2, 2005

BY ART MARTONE
Journal Sports Editor

There's a guy who hawks T-shirts and hats in the Yankee Stadium parking lots. Whenever the Red Sox came to town, his inventory consisted of "1918" baseball caps and "Killer B's: Babe, Bucky, Buckner, Boone" T-shirts.

He went out of business last October. So did everyone else who hitched their financial wagon to the "Curse Of The Bambino."

Welcome to baseball's new reality. In 2004, the Red Sox did more than win a World Series for the first time in 86 years. They destroyed a cottage industry, pulled the plug on decades-old taunts -- never again will we hear the chant "NINE-TEEN! EIGHT-TEEN!" -- and changed the sport's very culture.

Wile E. Coyote caught the Roadrunner. Nothing will ever be the same.

And now the Red Sox face a whole new challenge: Living life as the hunted, rather than the hunter. Trying to defend, rather than seek, a crown.

Today we look at the '05 Sox, along with the rest of the teams in baseball. Tomorrow we'll examine the new Red Sox-Yankee dynamic.

And then the new season -- and the new world order -- begins.