The 2004 Red Sox: Down 3-0 and the End of 86 Years

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 10 min read

How the 2004 Boston Red Sox came back from three games down against the Yankees, swept the Cardinals and won a World Series 86 years after the last one, with the series and the numbers behind it.

Four times between 1946 and 1986 the Boston Red Sox reached the seventh game of a World Series, and four times they lost it. In 2004 they went a different way. They finished second to the Yankees in the American League East, swept the Angels in the division series, lost the first three games of the league championship series to those same Yankees, and then won four in a row. A week later they swept the St. Louis Cardinals and won the franchise's first World Series since 1918, ending a drought that had lasted 86 years.

The comeback is the part that has stayed in the sport's memory, because no team in the major leagues had ever won a best-of-seven series after losing the first three games. The Red Sox did it against their oldest rival, with two extra-inning wins at Fenway Park and two more wins at Yankee Stadium, and the story has the shape of a script. But it is also a story that can be told in numbers, and the numbers show how thin the margins were.

This article follows the 2004 postseason from the regular-season race to the last out in St. Louis. It uses the historical record for the standings and results, and it describes the games in outline rather than in detail, because the point is to understand what happened and why it was so unlikely.

Eighty-six years of waiting

To see why 2004 meant what it did, start with the record. The historical record lists the Red Sox as World Series champions in 1903, 1912, 1915, 1916 and 1918. After 1918 the club did not win again for 86 years. A common explanation, the Curse of the Bambino, tied the drought to the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees after the 1919 season. It is a good story and a bad explanation; the drought had causes that were ordinary for a baseball club, among them the club's late integration of its roster and the rise of a rival franchise.

What is not in dispute is how the club lost. The Red Sox reached the World Series in 1946, 1967, 1975 and 1986, and in each case they lost in seven games.

Four times they came within one game of the title. In 2003 they had also come within a game of the World Series, losing the seventh game of the league championship series to the Yankees in extra innings. That memory was fresh when the 2004 season began, and it shaped the way the series with New York was talked about.

A second-place team that was good enough

The 2004 regular season did not suggest a world champion. The Yankees won the American League East with 101 wins and 61 losses. Boston finished at 98-64, three games behind, and reached the playoffs as the wild card. In the American League the Anaheim Angels won the West at 92-70 and Minnesota won the Central at 92-70. In the National League St. Louis had the best record in the major leagues, 105-57.

The club had changed during the summer. At the end of July the Red Sox made a major trade that sent shortstop Nomar Garciaparra to the Chicago Cubs and brought back, among others, Orlando Cabrera and Doug Mientkiewicz. They had also added the outfielder Dave Roberts from the Dodgers at the deadline. Neither move looked decisive at the time. Both turned out to matter in October.

The core of the team was a lineup anchored by David Ortiz, who drove in 139 runs, second in the major leagues to Miguel Tejada's 150, and Manny Ramirez, and a rotation led by Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez. Schilling won 21 games to lead the major leagues, and his 3.26 earned run average was second in the American League to Johan Santana's 2.61. The manager was Terry Francona, in his first year with the club.

The division series: three games and out for Anaheim

Boston's first opponent was Anaheim, and the series was short. The Red Sox won the division series 3 games to 0, which the historical postseason table records as a sweep, and moved on to the Yankees, who had beaten Minnesota 3 games to 1. The ease of the first round is part of the story, because it set up a league championship series in which the Red Sox were expected to be competitive and were not, at first.

The first three games: a hole too deep

The league championship series opened at Yankee Stadium. In the first game the Yankees won 10 to 7 after Boston's late rally fell short. In the second game they won 3 to 1, and the series moved to Fenway Park, where the third game was a rout: the Yankees won 19 to 8. By the end of the third game the Red Sox had been outscored 32 to 16, and the statistics told the same story as the scoreboard.

The arithmetic of a 3-0 deficit is brutal. If every game were a coin flip, a team that needed to win four in a row would do so about one time in sixteen, or 6.25 percent of the time. Real games are not coin flips, and the Yankees were a very strong team, so the true chance was probably lower. Before 2004, no major-league team had ever managed it. Hockey had seen such comebacks, but baseball had not.

It is easy to forget how much of the moment was about the third game. A 19-8 loss at home is not only a loss; it is a humiliation. Whatever followed, nobody expected it.

The fourth game: the ninth inning at Fenway

Game 4 was played at Fenway Park on a Sunday night. The Yankees led 4 to 3 going into the bottom of the ninth, with Mariano Rivera on the mound. Rivera's 53 saves in 2004 led the major leagues, and the plan was to end the series.

Kevin Millar drew a walk. Dave Roberts, the player acquired at the deadline, came in as a pinch runner, stole second base, and scored the tying run on a single by Bill Mueller. The game went to extra innings, and in the twelfth, David Ortiz hit a two-run home run to win it 6 to 4. The Red Sox had stayed alive by a single run, and by the margin of a stolen base.

The stolen base was not a statistical event in the ordinary sense. It was a play whose value you can compute, using a break-even calculation like the one in the stolen base break-even point, but which in the moment was a decision with no margin for error. Roberts was a speed specialist, the Yankees knew it, and he went anyway.

The fifth game: fourteen innings

The fifth game was played the following evening and ended in the early hours of the morning after. The Yankees led by two runs in the eighth, and the Red Sox tied it with a home run by Ortiz and a sacrifice fly. The game went on through the ninth, the tenth, the eleventh and past, until in the fourteenth inning Ortiz singled to bring home the winning run, 5 to 4.

The sacrifice fly in that rally is a reminder of how much a single run counts in a postseason. The rule that lets a runner score on a fly ball is explained in tagging up and the sacrifice fly, and the way a batter is credited has an unusual statistical result: the run counts as an RBI but the plate appearance does not count as an at-bat.

At the end of the game Boston was still behind in the series, three games to two, but the series had shifted. They had won two games in extra innings against a lineup that included some of the best hitters of the era. Both bullpens had been stretched.

The sixth and seventh games: a sock and a grand slam

Game 6 moved to Yankee Stadium. Curt Schilling had been unable to pitch effectively in the first game of the series because of an ankle problem, and the team's medical staff had arranged a procedure to stabilize the tendon. He pitched seven innings and the Red Sox won 4 to 2. The image that stuck was a spot of blood on his sock. It was an odd thing to center a story on, but it fit a series in which pain and risk were part of the cost.

Another moment in that game was a rules question. In the eighth inning, Alex Rodriguez slapped the ball out of the pitcher's glove while running toward first base, and the umpires, after conferring, ruled it interference, called him out and sent Derek Jeter back to first base. The distinction between that kind of play and obstruction by a fielder is the subject of a separate guide on obstruction and interference.

The Red Sox had tied the series at three games each. Game 7 was played at Yankee Stadium, and it was not close. Johnny Damon hit a grand slam in the second inning and a two-run home run later, the Red Sox won 10 to 3, and they had become the first team in major-league history to win a seven-game series after losing the first three. The Astros forced a seventh game from a 0-3 hole in the 2020 league championship series but lost it, which shows how rarely a team even gets that far.

The World Series: four games, no trailing

The Cardinals had won 105 games and were the better team by record, with Albert Pujols among the National League's home-run leaders at 46, but the World Series went against them from the start. The Red Sox took the first game at Fenway 11 to 9, in a slugfest decided by a home run off the foul pole by Mark Bellhorn. They won the second game 6 to 2, with Schilling pitching again. In St. Louis they won the third game 4 to 1 behind Pedro Martinez, and the fourth 3 to 0, with Johnny Damon opening the game with a home run and Derek Lowe pitching seven innings.

The historical record shows the series as a 4 to 0 sweep. For a club that had been three outs from elimination ten days earlier, it was an anticlimax, which is how many sweeps feel. In St. Louis, the final out was a grounder back to the pitcher, Keith Foulke, who threw it to Doug Mientkiewicz at first base.

Manny Ramirez was named the Series Most Valuable Player and David Ortiz had been the ALCS Most Valuable Player. The 86-year wait was over.

What the numbers say, and what they do not

The league championship series can be summarised in a few lines.

Those scores add up to a surprising total. Across seven games the Yankees scored 45 runs and the Red Sox 41. In the last four games Boston outscored New York 25 to 13, while the 19-8 game alone accounts for 19 of the Yankees' 45 runs. The series was closer than the 3-0 start suggests.

That is a reason to be careful with the word luck. The historical record can tell you who won and by how much, but it cannot tell you why a particular ball dropped in. A fair summary is that a very good team lost three games, got some timely hits and good pitching, and benefited from the randomness that all short series contain. Baseball postseasons are small samples, and the better team often loses. The club's 98 wins were not an accident, and neither was Ortiz's production, but the timing of the run was the part that no one could have planned.

After the curse

The 2004 title did not mark the end of Boston's success. According to the database, the Red Sox won the World Series again in 2007, 2013 and 2018, which made them one of the most successful clubs of the early twenty-first century. The long-running stories about a curse faded. The 86 years became a historical period, with a beginning in 1918 and an end in 2004.

Other clubs have had their own droughts end. The 2016 Chicago Cubs won a World Series after 108 years, and came back from a 3-1 deficit in the Series to do it. The 2001 World Series, in which the Yankees lost a seventh game to Arizona, is a reminder that the club Boston beat in 2004 had its own recent heartbreak. For a view of every champion and every format, see the history of the World Series.

The wider lesson is that a long drought tells you little about the next season. It is a record of many separate seasons, each with its own team and its own luck.

Common questions

How many years did the Red Sox go without a title? 86, from 1918 to 2004. The historical record lists their championships in 1903, 1912, 1915, 1916, 1918 and then 2004.

Had any team come back from 3-0 in a series before? Not in major-league baseball. The Red Sox became the first team in a best-of-seven baseball series to win after losing the first three games.

Did the Red Sox win the division in 2004? No. They finished second to the Yankees, 98-64 to 101-61, and entered the playoffs as the wild card.

Who did they beat in the World Series? The St. Louis Cardinals, 4 games to 0. St. Louis had the best record in the majors at 105-57.

Who were the postseason MVPs? David Ortiz was the most valuable player of the league championship series, and Manny Ramirez of the World Series.

Is a magic number relevant to a postseason series? Not formally, but the same arithmetic of wins and losses governs a pennant race, and you can learn it in the guide to magic numbers.

Where to go next

If you want to follow the series in more detail, the scores page and the standings cover the current season, and the topic page on playoffs and the World Series collects coverage. For the longer story of the sport's champions, read the history of the World Series. For another seven-game Series, the 1991 World Series, with its five one-run games, is another Series that turned on single plays.