Well, the regular baseball season has come to an end, and not a moment too soon for the Boston Red Sox. Sure, our own Manny "I Don't Run Unless It's A Home Run (In Which Case I Jog)" Ramirez captured the American League batting title, and two of our hurlers - Pedro Martinez and the unlikely ace Derek Lowe - are clear contenders for this year's Cy Young Award. And yes, our 93 - 69 record looks pretty good on paper, as the legendary Impossible Dream 1967 Red Sox only had 92 wins and went on to within a hair's breadth of a world championship. So what happened? Why aren't we gearing up for a Fall Classic? The Boston Globe's Dan Shaughnessy and the Herald's Jeff Horrigan attempt to unravel the mystery of the 2002 Red Sox and their wildly-successful yet oddly unsatisfactory performance this year. Personally, however, I found all the answers I was looking for by attending last Saturday's game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, where the new Impossible Dreamers (plus one) managed to blow a comfortable 4-1 lead by keeping their starting pitcher - veteran knuckleballer Tim Wakefield - in too long, only to replace him with some seriously mediocre relief that gave up seven runs in one inning. Now one can argue that it was the end of the season, and the Sox had already been eliminated from playoff contention, so what do you expect? But the problem is that this was the 2002 season in a nutshell. Despite the fact that management completely changed hands last year, the new owners neglected to learn the most costly lesson of the previous regime, which is that all the marquee sluggers in the world can't make up for a team with lousy pitching. We got lucky this year that Derek Lowe rose to the challenge of starting, after the disastrous year before as the Sox closer. Otherwise, it would have been just Pedro again, throwing his arm out by midseason in an attempt to carry his teammates to glory all by himself. But at the end of the day, even two Cy Young contenders aren't enough to fill out a four or five-man rotation, and the Sox suffered as the year progressed as a result. I just hope that the owners take it upon themselves to acquire another ace or two over the long, long winter, or else we fans are in for a lot more heartache.

A final note: in a bid to wring even more money out of loyal Red Sox fans, the new owners somehow managed to convince the City of Boston that they should be able to close off Yawkey Way, the street which borders Fenway Park, and let their concessionaires sell overpriced food and drink outdoors, effectively muscling out the independent sausage and steak tip sandwich vendors who have been hawking their tasty and affordable victuals in the shadow of the ballpark since time immemorial. Apparently the idea was to make Fenway "more like Camden Yards", a neo-retro stadium in Baltimore that originally used Fenway as its inspiration (how po-mo is that?) Never mind that Yawkey Way already had a life of its own - in a bid to turn the home of the Red Sox into a Disney-esque homage to itself, and no doubt to line their pockets with the few dollars that were still escaping their collective grasp, the management has sucked all of the sounds, tastes, and smells out of the venerable alley.