BOSTON — A week ago, the questions hung in the air like gathering storm clouds.

Was Josh Beckett going to be able to pitch in this series?

Was J.D. Drew going to be able to play at all?

Was Mike Lowell going to be able to play, and if he could, how effective was he going to be?

And maybe the biggest question of all: could the Red Sox survive the Angels having the home-field advantage?

A week ago, this all seemed different.

Not now.

Now the Red Sox are, once again, going to the American League Championship Series, and the Angels are going back home to Disneyland, over and out. Now the Red Sox have dispatched the Angels, the team that had won 100 games and was supposed to be the class of the American League. Now the Red Sox are heading for a date with the upstart Rays in Tampa Bay, cast off by another great night in Fenway Park, this old ballyard that’s seen so many of them through the decades, this place that’s become baseball’s version of hallowed ground, a place where good things now seem to happen to the Red Sox.

What a difference a week makes.

Sunday night, they had lost in 12 innings, a game that gave the Angels another life, letting them think that if they could grab last night’s game they could go back to California with the series tied, and having regained their home-field advantage. Sunday night, the Red Sox gave the Angels a chance to dream.

Last night, they took that dream away, once again sending the Angels home for the season.

Not that it was easy.

Never that.

It took a bizarre failed Angels suicide squeeze in the ninth, when they had a runner on third and only one out, and it appeared the game was about to change, that the Angels were going to live for another day. Until the squeeze failed, and Jason Varitek chased down Reggie Willets and the Sox dodged a big bullet aimed right at them.

It took a base hit by rookie Jed Lowrie in the bottom of the ninth that scored Jason Bay for the game winner, and sent the Red Sox onto the field in joyous celebration, one of those scenes we’ve become so familiar with in recent years.

It took a lot of the kind of grit and pluck this Red Sox team has, this team that’s battling injuries, this team that went out to Anaheim last week and won two games there to take control of this series and put all of the pressure on the Angels.

And maybe … just maybe … it took a little bit of the luck that for so many decades the Red Sox never seemed to have.

For that was there last night, too.

And they did it last night with Jon Lester’s second great game in this series, a gem of a performance, in which he was in control throughout, portrait of artist as a left-handed pitcher who is emerging as a great pitcher right in front of our eyes. The same Jon Lester who a little less than two years ago was diagnosed with cancer, a huge question mark hanging over his career.

He went seven shutout innings last night, and from the beginning it was as if it was his ball, his game, his show. It increased his record in Fenway this year to 12-1, and more important, he now gives the Red Sox a young left-handed ace, the perfect complement to Josh Beckett.

In the seventh inning, the Sox up, 2-0, it was apparent that Lester was going to be done at the end of the inning, and when it ended he walked into the dugout as the fans behind the dugout stood and roared their approval.

He had done what great pitchers do.

He had walked out to the mound in Fenway Park in a playoff series, and he had handcuffed the Angels all night long, his artist’s palette a succession of pitches that the Angels couldn’t handle. He had walked out on the mound in Fenway Park and done what he had to do.

So why take him out?

Good question.

You could make a case that last night should have been a two-pitcher game, Lester and Jonathan Papelbon. After all, Lester had been cruising, having retired the last seven Angels hitters. And for a while there it seemed as if that decision was going to bite the Red Sox.

No matter.

It all worked out.

“We needed to have a strong pitching performance,” said Terry Francona, “and he gave us that.”

Even if for a while it seemed as if the Red Sox were once again were going to be in another extra-inning battle with the Angels.

And in the end, after the celebration on the field, once again it was another party in Fenway Park, complete with cheering fans and players coming back on the field, a scene we’re growing accustomed to, almost as if it’s now as much a part of October around here as the leaves changing.

In the end, it was that kind of night.

Not that there aren’t still some unanswered questions.

Will Beckett be all right going on, or was Sunday night a sign that he is hurting, even if he doesn’t admit it?

Is Mike Lowell done for the year, with the news that he will be out of the upcoming Rays series?

More questions.

But that’s for another day.

Last night was another great night in Fenway Park, another night in the love fest between this region and the Red Sox. Another big night in October.

The kind we’re getting used to.

breynold@projo.com