The division has been won for the first time in 12 years, the wild, on-the-field celebration is over, and now the real season starts for the Red Sox.

Because when you have the second-highest payroll in the game you are supposed to be in the playoffs, right?

Which is not to minimize winning the American League East, or finishing with 96 wins, the best record in baseball. These are significant accomplishments, no question about it. Especially when you beat the Yankees to do it.

But is winning the division enough?

Not really.

The landscape has changed.

No longer are the Red Sox beautiful losers, the star-crossed franchise, the franchise that somehow, some way, will find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the franchise of Red Sox lore, the franchise we all grew up with. The franchise where frustration and heartbreak were all part of the lineup, and the slow drum roll was all about Bucky Dent and the ball rolling through Buckner’s legs, and the Curse of the Bambino, and all the other familiar signboards of 86 years of Red Sox futility.

2004 changed all that.

When the Red Sox finally won the World Series all that went into the dustbin of baseball history, right there with all the frustrations and could-have-beens, the slate wiped clean. After that, the Red Sox became just another franchise with a big, fat payroll. Just another franchise that’s expected to win, and win big,

That’s the new reality, as much about the Red Sox now as sold-out crowds, pink hats and a fan obsession that’s unparalleled in the long history of the franchise. No longer are the Sox the lovable underdog, the franchise that should he happy just to be in the playoffs, secure in the knowledge that they finally beat the Yankees to win the division.

All that’s as gone as Grady Little.

For you can make a case that the 162 games the Sox just played were little more than jockeying for position, a six-month chase for home field advantage. Cynical? For sure. But not without truth, too. Consider the fallout we’d now be sifting through if the Sox season had ended Sunday, if they had swooned in September and got caught at the wire, missing the playoffs. This would be Day Two of the whose-head-is-going-to-roll contest. This would be fear and loathing everywhere you turned, Theo and Tito in the media crosshairs

That, too, is the new landscape.

Rest assured, that if the Sox season was indeed over this morning, Epstein would be getting crucified for J.D. Drew and Eric Gagne, and for Julio Lugo and maybe Coco Crisp, too. Most of all, he would be getting crucified for having the second-largest payroll in the game and not being in the playoffs, a symbolic failure. But that is what having the second-largest payroll in the game does, it provides a cushion against mistakes, the wiggle room that small market teams do not have. It allows general managers their trespasses.

For we expect the Red Sox to be in the playoffs. Those are the expectations when you have the highest ticket prices in the game, the expectations when you’ve become a national team, one of the two glamour teams in the game, right there with the Yankees, one of those teams that seem to live in national television. More than that, we expect this team to get out of the first round of the playoffs, expect this team to go deep into October.

Bottom line? You can make a case that the Red Sox have become the Yankees. Well, maybe not exactly the Yankees, who for the last decade or so the benchmark has been winning the World Series and having the parade through the canyon of heroes in Manhattan, as if anything less than that is some sort of failure, an affront to the Yankee tradition. It’s a high-wire act at best, with no margin of error whatsoever, the rarified air the Sox now breathe.

So now the real season starts, the pressure ratcheting up, the time of year when everything gets magnified, the feeling that everything before the long season we just watched was little more than batting practice.

And there’s no question that if the Sox don’t beat the Angels in this first round, none of the season’s accomplishments will be remembered for very long, save for Clay Buchholz’s no-hitter and Josh Beckett’s 20 wins. Divisional titles have a short shelf life. That’s just the way it is. Lose to the Angels and the wolves will come out, guaranteed.

Is it fair? Not particularly.

But this isn’t about being fair. This is about the ultimate bottom-line business, one that’s all about winning and losing. Save fair for the sportsmanship seminars. This is about either beating the Angels, or having this season viewed as a disappointment.

That’s the landscape.

Call it success’ price tag.

Either that, or 2004’s legacy.

breynold@projo.com