Two scorching teams collide

Put the backs of the Boston Red Sox to the wall, and they respond again. Forcefully.

After the Cleveland Indians took a 3-1 lead in the American League Championship Series, they were no contest for the Red Sox. The cumulative score was 30-5. No doubt that the better team won.

Game 7 was a little closer than that 11-2 score might indicate, however. If Ryan Garko's long fly to center field is about 20 feet further to the right, Game 7 is a 5-5 game going to the bottom of the eighth. (That's when Boston scored six runs to put the game away against the previously untouchable Rafael Betancourt, who had given up no runs in eight postseason innings to that point.)

Why did the Red Sox win? Players not named Ortiz and Ramirez started hitting. Dustin Pedroia, the probable American League Rookie of the Year, hit a huge home run in the seventh inning to bust open a 3-2 game, then cleared the bases with a double an inning later. If not for Josh Beckett (who certainly will start in Game 1 of the World Series), first baseman Kevin Youkilis would have been the ALCS MVP. He was 14-for-28 with three homers and seven RBIs in the series, batting in the No. 2 spot.

You'd have never known that the Red Sox are the team that used to be the one that always collapsed. Have they somehow passed the Babe Ruth curse to the Yankees?

Much was made of Kenny Lofton not scoring from second on a hit down the line by Franklin Gutierrez in the seventh, but with the way the ball kicked off the fence, I probably wouldn't have sent Lofton, either. He's not the Lofton of 1995. But there might be something to that Lofton curse after all. He was on the Yankees when they blew the 3-0 lead in 2004, and was on the Steve Bartman-cursed Cubs in 2003. And Cleveland's sports fans are left to pick up the pieces of shattered dreams, as always.

Look for more World Series previews here in the next couple of days. Who do you like? The team with the most wins in baseball that rallied from a 3-1 deficit or the team that's won 21 of 22 games?

The series starts Wednesday in Boston.