The Red Sox are going to the World Series!

The Boston Red Sox are headed to the World Series.

There are few sentences in the English language more wonderful than that.

How did we get here? How did we get here from 69-93 and a last place finish? Shane Victorino, Mike Napoli, Stephen Drew, Koji Uehara, even Ryan Dempster--they each played their parts, some of them extraordinarily well. It was a well put-together offseason. But there's more to it than that. More to it than just getting healthy. There is magic to it. Call it clubhouse chemistry, call it grit and hustle and heart and all those other words that make the stat heads like myself cringe.

In Game 1 of the ALCS the Red Sox were nearly no hit. Game 2 had Ortiz' Grand Slam, Game 3 had Lackey dueling Verlander and Napoli breaking his slump with a game-winning homer, Game 6 had Shane Victorino breaking out of his in grander fashion after a sixth inning that should have been soul-crushing and, but for the performance of a rookie--game-ending.

That's a clumsy and inelegant way to say that the Red Sox are channeling something. None of that makes sense. Not even a clutch David Ortiz homer simply because of how completely the Red Sox had been dominated up to that point. Against all logic, though, the Red Sox took one one-run game, then another, and another. And tonight they finished the job.

The 2013 Red Sox are going to the World Series. Can you believe it?