Now its Manny and Nomar -- but in the past it was worse still, with Clemens, Boggs, Rice. Clemens "mailed it in" in his last few years with the Sox, Boggs cared only about Boggs and his batting average, and Rice never half-used his God-given talent.
Fred Lynn in 1975 was my all-time hero, but the Sox mgmt blundered in their handling of him.
As for Pedro, I wouldn't have pulled him either in Game 7 -- I thought he could reach back into his bag of tricks and pull it out. Remember that the relief pitcher who followed him walked his first pitched-to batter on 4 pitches, and that's your fear of going to a reliever in that situation.
Anyway, I had given up on the Sox and baseball for quite a few years, but I got SUCKED BACK IN (against my better judgement) and caught the fever this past pay-off season. [Sigh.]
I remember the pall of the 1986 Game 6 fiasco hung over the Sox not only through that entire off-season but over the whole next season as well. In fact, it was several years before the sting of that loss went away.
Well here it is, barely six weeks later and that loss is a distant memory. Everybody around here is pumped with the Schilling deal and the possibility of A-Rod coming here. If you read the glowing media coverage around here about how great the team is going to be next year, you'd think that the Sox actually won the World Series already.