BOSTON — For the 1986 Red Sox, the sting of losing that year’s World Series in seven hard-fought games against the New York Mets still is there. But you wouldn’t necessarily guess that based on the mood at Fenway Park on Wednesday.
The Red Sox honored the ’86 squad for its 30th anniversary ahead of Boston’s game against the Colorado Rockies. And while everyone there still remembered the heartbreak of defeat, they finally could look fondly at that season three decades later thanks to the franchise’s recent success.
“It was a heartbreaker,” former third baseman Wade Boggs said. “Everybody kept saying 1918, 1918, 1918, and we were tired of hearing that. And we were on the brink. But I think the one thing that people have to understand is that in the beginning of spring training, we were picked to finish fifth. And they say we underachieved and everything like this.
“Underachieved? I think when you’re picked to finish fifth, and you go out and win the American League Championship and go to the World Series and push it to Game 7 … I don’t think we underachieved at all. We came up one step short, we didn’t bring a championship back home to Boston, but thank God for 2004.”
The “curse-breaking” 2004 Red Sox certainly took the edge off a lot of the darker moments that unfolded in 1986 and beyond. Bill Buckner, whose infamous miss at first base cost the Sox Game 6, and Roger Clemens, who a decade later left for the Toronto Blue Jays and then the rival New York Yankees, both received a warm welcome from the Fenway crowd, for example.
And Clemens said his team still is proud of what they did that year.
“A lot of guys play a long time, they never get to go into postseason play,” Clemens said. “I look at it more that way. I think the postseason play’s a feeling that you want to have as a player in the major leagues.
“If you win a World Series, you win a World Series and then you want to win another one. It’s just that way. But that’s what you’re working towards all the time. You can’t do it alone.”
Even though most of the players at Fenway on Wednesday wished they could have gotten it done in 1986, they still appreciate what’s happened for the team since. Right fielder Dwight Evans said now he can even empathize with Mets fans.
“People said are you kind of jealous they won (in 2004), and I said no,” Evans said. “They got it done, and I was happy. (Then) ‘07 was great, and ‘13 was a surprise for that team. Very special. I would’ve loved to — we should’ve done it in ‘86. We should’ve done it, and we didn’t. I can look back now, and I have, and I thought how great … must it have been to be a Met fan, being on the other side of that. That was crazy.”
Thumbnail photo via Greg M. Cooper/USA TODAY Sports Images
