Red Sox bring it home

BOSTON – Dustin Pedroia tweeted a message back in April … one that he repeated in the wee hours of the early morning today.It said, “climb aboard now, because we’re going to do something special.”Did they ever.This remarkable worst-to-first journey has reached a happy ending. The Boston Red Sox are world champions, thanks to Wednesday?s 6-1 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 6 of the World Series.Anyone who claims to have predicted this last spring is a liar. Nobody predicted this. The Red Sox were coming off their worst season since 1965, and there was no reason to expect anything other than a moderate upgrade to respectability this season.”This organization, for as long as I’ve been here, has been a box of surprises,” said series MVP David Ortiz. “I think this year that people giving us the third place in the division, maybe even last place, because of what happened last year … it helped us out. We had a little chip on our shoulders.”But you could tell early that these Red Sox weren?t interested in simply being respectable.”From Day 1 in spring training,” Pedroia said, “we were doing bunt drills full speed. I could feel it then.”But he didn’t think the way the team was disrespected in the media gave the players any extra motivation.”We were motivated enough,” he said. “We have a lot of guys in this room who have a lot of pride. We had plenty of motivation”All year long, the Red Sox defied the odds, getting off to a good start in April, and staying consistent throughout. And just when it looked as if they might falter in late August and early September, they kicked on the afterburners, left the rest of the American League East in the dust, and finished off with the best record in the American League to boot.One of the trademarks for the Red Sox this season was that every day, there was a different hero. That?s not unique. Good teams have to get their support from multiple sources.And even if they struggled a little, and even if Ortiz was hitting an astounding .733 through five games (while the rest of the team was batting about .130), this maxim proved true. It was Jonny Gomes in Game 4 with a dramatic three-run homer; and it was David Ross with a clutch ground-rule double to knock in the go-ahead run in Game 5.Wednesday, at Fenway Park, it was more of the same, because the Cardinals wouldn?t let Ortiz beat them. They intentionally walked him four times.Shane Victorino, who missed the final two games in St. Louis, was back. And he hit a bases-loaded double in the third inning to knock home three runs.And it was Stephen Drew, who had critics calling for him to be benched due to lack of plate productivity, with a solo-homer in the fourth inning – one of three more runs the Red Sox scored in this win.”That was a little poetic justice,” Sox manager John Farrell said, “considering the way Stephen struggled in the post-season … for him to hit one out of the ballpark, (it was) a big night for him.”Jacoby Ellsbury, who?d been quiet for five games, knocked home the fifth run; and Mike Napoli, who didn?t even start in St. Louis due to the lack of a designated hitter, singled home another one in the three-run fourth.But perhaps most poignant – and gratifying – was the performance by John Lackey, who clearly didn?t have the stuff he had last week, or against the Detroit Tigers in the American League Championship Series. But he battled just the same, and wiggled his way out of some serious jams (runners on second and third in the second; and two runners on with one out in the fourth).Two years ago, Lackey was the poster boy for the Chicken-and-Beer Red Sox that suffered their ignominious collapse in September. He was largely out of sight and out of mind last year as he recovered from Tommy John surgery.But he returned to form this season, and was often a hard-luck loser as the Red Sox never seemed to give him run support.But all he did in the post-season was out-duel Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers, and then almost