E-Mail This Article to a Friend Sitting in the catbird seat against the Redbirds BY CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

I don’t know how you’ve been doing it, Red Sox fans, but whatever superstitions or rituals you’ve employed since the first few minutes of the morning of Sunday, October 17, you’d best keep it up. For ever since the postmortems were issued on the Sox’ 19-8 home thrashing at the hands of the Yankees in game three of the ALCS, strange and wonderful things have been happening.

A 14-inning victory to salvage game four. Another 12-inning late-nighter less than 24 hours later to claim a second victory. A lights-out performance by a hobbling Curt Schilling the next night, and then — the pièce de résistance — the improbable game-seven 10-3 laugher that clinched the pennant for the local nine. For a lot of folks, coming back from an 0-3 deficit and KOing the New Yorkers to advance to the World Series was almost enough.

But now it’s six wins and counting for the Red Sox since that ignominious loss on October 16, and they’re heading to St. Louis with a 2-0 lead in the World Series.

Whether it’s been growing a beard since the Pinstripers established that three-game cushion, or sitting in the exact same seat and position as you were in for game four, or perhaps wearing the exact same wardrobe — and buddy, how about thinking of giving those week-old Hanes a toss into the Maytag? — the baseball gods have thus far responded in kind, and given the Hub’s hardball heroes a most unusual (for these parts) and timely rejuvenation.

The team commits four errors and surrenders six walks in World Series game one and still wins by a deuce. The next night, it commits another collective quadruple-E and still wins by four. Boston’s right fielder is batting .205 in the post-season and the team still wins. The second baseman is hitting .209 with just nine hits in 12 playoff games, yet three of those hits are doubles and three more are home runs — two off the right-field foul pole and the other just barely clearing the left-field wall to provide the winning runs in a 4-2 game-six ALCS victory. And there’s more: three starters — Jason Varitek, Johnny Damon, and Kevin Millar — are each batting below .270 in the post-season, and still the team is on a six-game rampage. The team’s leading MVP candidate and left fielder, Manny Ramirez, had zero RBIs in the ALCS (and still has yet to crank one out since game one against the Angels), and still the team wins four straight. Tuesday’s game-three starter — Pedro Martinez — takes the hill with a post-season ERA of 5.40. The Sox starter in game one of the Fall Classic (Tim Wakefield) has so far compiled an ERA of nearly 10; his replacement that night, Bronson Arroyo, has given up an average of over eight runs a game in the post-season (while three other bullpen members sport ERAs of 6.75 or higher), and yet they’re still in the enviable position of needing to win just two of the next five Series games to win themselves a title. Eight errors in two games — this is potentially a championship team?

Maybe. But whatever Sox fans back home are doing to will their team to victory after ridiculous victory, they’d better not change their habits too soon, despite the team’s two-game advantage heading to Busch Stadium. After all, it was a mere 18 years ago that the locals actually returned from New York’s Shea Stadium with a two-game cushion earned on the road, and while the local tabloid brazenly put SWEEP DREAMS on its front cover, true baseball fans knew that the ’86 Mets had not reached the World Series by accident. In fact, that team was remarkably similar to this year’s Cardinals, and those New Yorkers racked up 108 wins (St. Louis carded 105 this season) and were undeniably the best in baseball heading into the post-season. Red Sox fans unfamiliar with their team’s history were arrogant and cocky when the Fall Classic resumed at Fenway that October, but the visitors took two of three in Boston and headed back to Queens trailing in the Series, 3-2.

And anyone who needs a lesson about taking anything for granted in the Series need only look back to that night 18 years ago today — October 25, 1986 — to be reminded that when it comes to the Red Sox and a World Championship, nothing is certain. Nothing. No team was closer to a title than that ’86 team — a 5-3 lead, two outs, no one on base, two strikes on the hitter — and still it managed to blow not only that game, but a 3-0 lead and game seven two nights later.

Sure, I know what you’re saying: this Sox team is different. It has a reliable bullpen, nobody who would dare "ask out" of a game, the karma is different, and this season a Red Sox victory really does seem preordained. Well, that may well be true, but in 1986, after seeing Dave Henderson’s miraculous home run in the ninth inning of ALCS game five (when the Sox were down in games, 3-1) to jump-start the Sox to the pennant, no one around here doubted that greater forces were at work and that Boston was destined for post-season redemption and glory. And feel free to ask those who remember the ’67 Impossible Dream Team, and the ’75 squad after Carlton Fisk’s early-morning dinger off the left-field foul pole sent the Sox to a fateful game seven against the Reds. Truly, good karma means nada. (Is it a strange coincidence that four of the Red Sox’ five opponents in the World Series since — gulp, 1918 — wore red? Just asking.)

Get overconfident at your peril, Sox fans, is all I’ll say about that.

And if the Red Sox win game three in St. Louis Tuesday — then will my gloom-and-doom rhetoric cease? Another smidgen of recent history suggests that even that kind of celebratory preparation may be a bit premature, since your pals down in the 212 area code could tell you something about swaggering around, chilling the champers with a three-game lead in a best-of-seven series.

St. Louis is a damn good team that has thus far been muzzled, but that’s unlikely to continue much longer, especially in a place like Busch, where the team won an NL-high 53 home games. If the Red Sox continue to parcel out an average of four errors a night the rest of the way, they’ll be lucky to return to friendly Fenway with any kind of advantage.

Yet that being said, it’s certainly appropriate to give the Sox credit where credit is due, especially when it comes to pitching to the Redbirds’ tough line-up. While not as imposing one-through-nine as the Yankees, the Cardinals’ offense is extremely dangerous. Yet clean-up hitter Jim Edmonds (.301 regular-season) is just 1-for-8, with that hit being a bunt single; third baseman Scott Rolen (.314 r/s) is hitless in eight at-bats from the third spot; and left fielder Reggie Sanders (.260) is 0-for-6. In addition, the Sox batters have made mincemeat of the vaunted Cardinals’ starters. That will likely change as the NL champs re-familiarize themselves with their home field and employ Senior-Circuit strategies and fundamentals. The Red Sox will re-insert David Ortiz at first base and watch with trepidation as their pitchers take some hacks from the batter’s box.

Am I needlessly injecting doubt into the Red Sox’ efforts? Nah. I’m merely presenting the facts, ladies and gentlemen, so that the rose-colored glasses that most New Englanders have donned in the last week can be taken off at will. The nine days that marked the World Series of 1986 were alternately the highest of highs — with Bostonians laughingly believing that the Series was over when their team was up 2-0 — and the lowest of lows. There was euphoria, and there were the depths of despair. For any Red Sox fan who remembers the early-morning developments of the 10th inning of game six, there was nothing quite as mind-numbing — and that includes Aaron Boone’s blast off of Wakefield a year ago. Sure, there was still a game seven to be played two nights later (after a rainout), but the Series had been lost on that Saturday night when all of New England had their bubbly at the ready (and many who had already foolishly removed the wrappers and even the corks). Red Sox fans with any kind of memory, or sense of history, must prepare themselves for the possibility that their team could still lose the 2004 World Series, difficult as that may be to believe when all signs point to a ghost-busting emancipation. Is anyone around here prepared for that outcome? Anybody? Hello?

I know the stats; 28 of 33 teams that staked themselves to 2-0 leads at home in the Fall Classic went on to win them. I know that Schilling has been a miracle worker, and that Señor October, Ortiz, has a statue already being sculpted, and that Mark Bellhorn is slowly becoming the most unlikely playoff hero since, well, Bucky Dent (sorry).

It’s just that things have seemingly come so easily for the local nine since the 19-8 debacle nine days ago. For any student of the game with a local perspective, red flags go flying up the pole when things come easy for the Red Sox in the post-season.

I don’t think we’ve seen the last of the Cardinals, though I’m not so certain they can win it against the likes of Pedro, Derek, and perhaps even Curt again.

Speaking for Red Sox fans everywhere, it would be much easier to have this thing wrapped up in the Midwest so we wouldn’t need to worry about Dave Mellor and his grounds crew preparing Fenway’s hallowed turf for ball again.

But I have a feeling they’ll all be coming back for the weekend. And I’m not saying that just because I have game-seven tickets.

It’s perfectly okay to "believe," Sox fans, and keep the faith. Just prepare yourself for anything.

Look for Christopher Young's special-edition Sporting Eye daily blog, in this space during the duration of the World Series.

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com. Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com.