2004 World Series
The Boston Red Sox swept the St. Louis Cardinals 4-0 in the 2004 World Series, winning their first title since 1918 and ending the Curse of the Bambino.
The Boston Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals 4-0 from October 23 to October 27, 2004 to claim their first championship since 1918 and end the 86-year “Curse of the Bambino.” The title was the capstone of what remains one of the great postseason runs in baseball history: a week before the sweep, Boston had become the first team in Major League Baseball to win a best-of-seven series after trailing three games to none, beating the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series. Manny Ramirez was named World Series Most Valuable Player.
| Fast facts | |
|---|---|
| Champion | Boston Red Sox |
| Runner-up | St. Louis Cardinals |
| Dates | October 23–27, 2004 |
| Venue(s) | Fenway Park, Boston (Games 1–2); Busch Stadium, St. Louis (Games 3–4) |
| Series result | Red Sox 4, Cardinals 0 |
| World Series MVP | Manny Ramirez (BOS) |
| Attendance | 174,088 total, 43,522 average |
The setup
The two pennant winners arrived in very different shape. The Cardinals had posted the best record in the majors at 105-57, built around a middle-of-the-order trio of Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen and Jim Edmonds, and they reached the Series by surviving the Houston Astros in a seven-game National League Championship Series. The Red Sox finished 98-64, qualifying as the American League wild card behind the Yankees in the AL East.
Boston’s roster had been rebuilt for exactly this chase. The franchise acquired ace right-hander Curt Schilling from the Arizona Diamondbacks before the season — Schilling went 21-6 with a 3.26 ERA in 2004 — and signed closer Keith Foulke, who stabilized the bullpen with 32 saves and a 2.17 ERA. Around them sat a deep, patient lineup fronted by Ramirez and David Ortiz. The last piece of the drought that hung over the club dated to the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees after the 1918 title, the transaction that gave the “Curse of the Bambino” its name.
How it happened
The route to the Series was itself the story of 2004. Boston swept the Anaheim Angels in the Division Series, then opened the ALCS by losing the first three games to the Yankees, including a 19-8 rout in Game 3. No team in major-league history had recovered from that hole. In Game 4, Dave Roberts entered as a pinch-runner, stole second base against Mariano Rivera, and scored the tying run before Ortiz won it with a 12th-inning home run. Boston won Game 5 in 14 innings on another Ortiz hit, took Game 6 behind Schilling — who pitched with a sutured ankle tendon, the blood seeping through his sock into the iconic image of the “bloody sock” — and closed out a 10-3 Game 7 in the Bronx. The comeback made the four-games-to-three ALCS win the first of its kind in baseball.
By comparison, the World Series was a measured dismantling. Game 1 at Fenway Park was a slugfest Boston won 11-9, surviving its own four errors. Schilling took the mound again in Game 2 and threw six innings in a 6-2 win. The series moved to St. Louis, where Pedro Martínez pitched seven shutout innings in a 4-1 Game 3 victory. In Game 4, Derek Lowe retired 13 straight hitters across seven scoreless frames, and Johnny Damon led off the game with a home run, enough for a 3-0 clincher played under a total lunar eclipse. The final out came when Foulke fielded a soft comebacker from Edgar Rentería and flipped to first, ending the drought.
By the numbers
| Game | Date | Score | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Game 1 | Oct. 23, 2004 | Red Sox 11, Cardinals 9 | At Fenway Park; Boston overcame four errors |
| Game 2 | Oct. 24, 2004 | Red Sox 6, Cardinals 2 | Curt Schilling earned the win |
| Game 3 | Oct. 26, 2004 | Red Sox 4, Cardinals 1 | Pedro Martínez, seven shutout innings |
| Game 4 | Oct. 27, 2004 | Red Sox 3, Cardinals 0 | Derek Lowe wins; Foulke saves the clincher |
The record
Honors
- 2004 World Series champions — Boston Red Sox
- Manny Ramirez — World Series MVP
- David Ortiz — 2004 ALCS MVP
- First MLB team to win a best-of-seven series after trailing 3–0
- First Red Sox championship since 1918
Per Baseball-Reference and Wikipedia, series data through the final game of October 27, 2004.
The arguments
Debate over the 2004 champions centers less on legitimacy than on definition. One argument holds that the true test was the ALCS, not the World Series — that a four-game sweep of a 105-win Cardinals club looks lopsided only because Boston had already spent its most dramatic baseball coming back from 3-0 against the Yankees, and that the pennant, not the trophy, was the harder prize. A competing view notes that the sweep was itself comprehensive: Boston led in every game and never trailed in the series after the middle innings of Game 1, holding St. Louis to a .190 team average while Pujols, Rolen and Edmonds combined for little production, with Rolen hitless in the Series.
A second running argument concerns the “curse” framing itself. Supporters of the narrative point to the symmetry of an 86-year wait ending the year Boston first climbed out of a 3-0 hole; skeptics counter that the drought was a function of competitive balance and roster decisions rather than any Ruth-related jinx, and that the 2004 team — remade by the Schilling trade and the Foulke signing — won because it was built to. Both readings agree on the result; they disagree on how much of it was fate.
Why it matters
The 2004 World Series is the answer to the evergreen question of who ended the Red Sox title drought, and it reset a franchise’s identity from lovable near-miss to modern contender — Boston would win again in 2007, 2013 and 2018. For the sport, the ALCS comeback that preceded it rewrote the ceiling on what a postseason deficit could mean, and the sweep that followed gave one of baseball’s longest-running stories its ending. More than two decades later, it remains the title that retired the phrase “Curse of the Bambino” for good.
