When the Boston Red Sox won the World Series on Sunday evening, I (born and raised in Massachusetts) read story after story about the victory. Here's a braggadocio sampling from The Boston Globe's male writers:

-- Dan Shaughnessy: "The Boston Red Sox have emerged as hardball monsters of the new millennium."

-- Gordon Edes: "A minute that used to recur like a comet, once (every) 86 years or so and missed by generations of Red Sox fans, is now beginning to feel like a birthright."

-- Bob Ryan, addressing Red Sox fans: "You've got the best baseball team in the world to call your own. There's nothing wrong with just lording it over people."

Nothing wrong on ethical but also factual grounds? Events almost always seem inevitable in retrospect, but in the process, the imitation of life called baseball is regularly up for grabs.

Had Cleveland's third-base coach made a different split-second decision at a crucial point near the end of the Red Sox-Indians series, the seventh and decisive game would have been tied, and all thereafter would have unwound differently.

Even the ninth inning of the last game of the Series yielded only a tiny difference between a Colorado player's long fly ball caught against the wall -- the Rockies' last gasp -- and a game-tying home run. Would a home run only have delayed, not forestalled, the Red Sox's celebration? Probably, but not certainly.

So three cheers for the Globe's female baseball reporter, Amalie Benjamin. She was in the Red Sox clubhouse while they were celebrating Sunday evening to record poignant words pouring out amid triumph, words many guys would not think fit to emphasize:

-- Star starting pitcher Josh Beckett, speaking of his teammates: "This is for all the family. I know we spend more time together than with our family." Continued...