Grandfather needn't bother -- he wouldn't recognize successful Sox

DENVER -- As Manny was saying last round against Cleveland, if Boston doesn't win, who cares? There's always next year. It's not like it's the end of the world.

Kidding.

Two titles in four years, who would have thought that was possible? (Getty Images)

Don't look now, but now maybe the world really is close to going dark. Night is day. Up is down. The Boston Red Sox polished off their second World Series title in four seasons under manager Terry Francona, devouring Colorado in a four-game sweep (Game 4 final: 4-3), not only putting a completely new spin on more than 100 years of Boston hardball history, but also putting an end to the latest long national nightmare of Red Sox Nation:

Do you realize there are kids out there who are 3 and had yet to see the Red Sox win a World Series?!

"We keep saying we're not your grandfather's Red Sox," team president Larry Lucchino said, champagne dripping from the ceiling in the Coors Field visitors' clubhouse and the air thick with cigar smoke. "We're a different organization. We hope we can create a sense of anticipation, while keeping it real."

The Red Sox's Resident Sage and Mad Genius himself disappeared like Colorado's winning streak. Manny Ramirez was not to be found in the clubhouse or on the field during the Red Sox's wild celebration to verify that the team had indeed stormed back from the brink of elimination against Cleveland to turn history on its ear.

Maybe he was meditating in a back room. Maybe he was writing a victory speech to be delivered on the Duck Boat parade down the Charles River. Perhaps he had already returned to his own personal planet, not to surface again until the Red Sox report to camp next spring in Fort Myers, Fla.

Whatever, Series MVP Mike Lowell was only too happy to put Boston's Mad Genius into context.

"Now there is next year," Lowell said, clutching the MVP trophy somewhere near the mound as several thousand Red Sox fans stood chanting and screaming behind the third-base dugout. "We put an exclamation point on this year.

"That's Manny putting things into perspective, with the world-not-coming-to-an-end comment."

Manny. Perspective.

Not your grandfather's Red Sox.

"It just feels different," Boston boy-wonder general manager Theo Epstein, now all of 33 and the architect of two World Series wins, said of this one vs. the 2004 sweep of St. Louis. "It feels like we were more prepared this time. We got to enjoy it all the way. We're not so shocked."