Over in the football journal, I posted a list of headlines that, had you told me they'd come true in the beginning of 2004, I'd have said you were crazy or worse. The same can be said for baseball, though there's only one headline that fits:

　　Boston Red Sox win 2004 World Series

　　Now, be honest here, who out there thought that this was even in the realm of possibility this year? After 86 years of heartbreak and failure, most experts (and even a few Boston fans) had the Sox down for the count during mid-season slump or, more pointedly, after they fell into a 3-0 hole in the ALCS from which no team has ever dug out. Yet all those experts were wrong. It was without a doubt the sports story of the year.

　　If you believed the video games, you might have thought the results of the World Series, which Boston won handily over the St. Louis Cardinals, might have been a bit more even. While the results of our simulated World Series feature was split down the middle between the Cardinals (MVP 2004) and Red Sox (ESPN Major League Baseball), the series was a close call for both teams and really could have gone either way. Personally, I'm still mad that I was forced to watch two full seven-game series of baseball, several games of which went to multiple innings, in the span of two days. My eyesight will never be the same.

　　In 2005, we'll have one less player on the baseball sim diamond, as All-Star Baseball's publisher Acclaim shut its doors in 2004. That said, a worthy replacement of sorts in the form of Mario Baseball will find Nintendo stretching its sports wings beyond the country club pastimes of tennis and golf, with surely interesting results ahead. Our coverage of all the latest baseball videogames will be heating up practically as soon as the new year begins, so stay tuned.