But you were there, and so you know much better than me what the team feels like in their hometown.

And finally, to anyone else who skip these essays due to length. By all means read them.

They are absolutely superb.

Better than pretty much anything you'll find in the sports pages right now.

But 5 Super Bowl appearances, 3 victories, many other playoff years in the 70s, 80s and 90s was enough to get on this list.

#13 BOSTON RED SOX

some-- and not just ESPN employees might object to this ranking, and think that given all that is said and writted about The Olde Towne Team they deserve a higher placement.

Perhaps, but the simple fact is that they've won only one world championship since 1960, as opposed to the other remaining teams that have all been multiple winners, and most at 4 or more titles.

Still this is a rich franchise in more ways than one.

The chronology is fairly familiar: country club team in the early 1960s-- the famous "25 players... 25 cabs" expression started with the Sox-- presided over by an old Southern owner in Tom Yawkey. They had a magnetic but fairly egomaniacal superstar (now.. that's unusual) in Carl Yastrzemski but they were well back in the AL pack and had been slowest in all the game to integrate (Pumpsie Green).

Then came a matinee idol who was hitting home runs left and right-- well, actually mainly left with a classic Fenway swing but then one night a fastball came inside and with one sickening thud Tony C. was never the same player again.

But with an aggressive manager named Dick Williams in 1967 the second division Sox lived "The Impossible Dream", winning a great 4 team AL race behind the exploits of Triple Crown winner Yastrzemski and the pitching of Jim Lonborg. And they battled the great St. Louis cardinals to 7 games before finally succumbing to the legendary Bob Gibson.

And then... failure again for several years. Yaz persisted but the team languished and only really woke up one Sunday afternoon when a patrician catcher from New Hampshire named Carlton Fisk, of all things, got into a huge brawl with the scrappy dumpy catcher of the hated Yankees-- their leader, thurman Munson.

In 1975 the influx of two extaordinary rookie outfielders combined with the panache of a Cuban starting pitcher no more than 5 foot 8 in his stocking feet with a penchant for stogies and a delivery the likes of which no one ahd ever seen and has never been duplicated produced a memorable pennant run-- sweeping the lest vestage of the Finley A's-- before losing to the Reds in what may very well have been the greatest World Series ever.

This one's lament-- as 1946 was "pesky held the ball" and 1967 was "lonborg didn't have enough rest" was a pitching change by skipper Darrell Johnson in the 9th inning-- "he should never have taken out Willoughby" was what a bar patron muttered to Peter Gammons several months later, trusting the 9th inning to a rookie against the Big Red Machine.

And then frustration at the hands of the Yankees as the Sox built a big lead in 1977 on the heels of a powerful lineup of Lynn, Rice, Fisk, Evans, scott and Yaz and then even a bigger lead in 1978, the season settled tby a classic playoff game and an unlikely hero in Bucky Dent.

Note to young ANers: when i was in college, before the 1975 renaissance and the beginning of the period which would culminate with sellout after sellout, we just to pay a buck fifty and sit in Fenway's center field bleachers-- only worrying about availablility when the Yankees were in town.

The next memorable moment for the Sox was a day in 1986 that i happened to be staying near Logan Airport after a business trip to Maine. I turned on the TV-- ESPN did exist back then-- and saw the highlights of Roger Clemens striking out 20 Seattle Mariners. later that year I was abole to attend the All-Star game in Houston and marvelled at the contrast between the two starting pitchers and how the AL starter-- Clemens-- looked so much bigger and faster than the NL starter who had dominated his league for 3 seasons already-- Dwight Gooden.

1986 ended with a nefarious error-- well, actually Billy Buck's boo boo occurred in Game Six, but the series was over for all intents and purposes. Don't forget the Sox amazing ALCS comeback, and particularly Dave henderson's home run off Donnie Moore, which would of course end up being a more tragic event than the Buckner error.

And then the frustration of those playoff defeats to the A's-- with Clemens always coming up short vs. Stewart; a brief resurgence led by Mo Vaughn; the disgust of Clemens' departure ( as had Lynn and Fisk before him, the other two great post-Yaz fan favorites of the end of the 20th Century) to first Toronto and then New York.

The sickening feeling when Grady Little let Pedor stay in too long in 2003's Game Seven and then Aaron Boone joined Dent and Slaughter and Buckner in the team's Hell.

And a 3-0 deficit in 2004 was simply rubbing the wound deeper-- and then it all turned around.

But think of the terrific moments this franchise has been a part of:

dent; buckner; Fisk; Boone; Clemens 20 Ks; Yaz' triple Crown; Evans catch in Game Six in 1975; Henderson; Clemens' 1st inning Oakland meltdown in the 1990 ALDS.

And then they hired TheoEpstein...and Bill james... and almost Billy Beane, and it all changed.

FRANCHISE PLAYER:  Yaz, great as he was, was a long time ago. rice was too surly. Lynn and Fisk and even Clemens left early. Tiant not quite dominant enough. Man Ram a bit too goofy. This is one of those times when I'll throw the ultimate verdict of history to the wind and go with the guy who is doing it as we speak: Big Papi.

GREATEST MOMENT: prior to 2004, all those failures would be in a photo finish. I'm tempted to say Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore making out on the field in St. Louis when the Sox finally won the Series -- but that was so Hollywood and was originally a story about Arsenal and the Premier League.

No it has to come earlier in the 2004 playoffs, and while Otiz and others had some great moments, including Schilling's bloody sock-- I'm gonna go with the single catalyst without which  none of the rest of that historic comeback would ever have taken place. dave Roberts stolen base in the 9th inning of Game Four after being inserted into the game as a pinch-runner.

SOMETHING YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW: We all know too much about this franchise. Harry Frazee produced "no..No.. Nanette" years after selling off Babe Ruth-- the two events were unrelated; Pumpsie Green; all the Ted Williams stories.

I'll go with this one--- once people started to realize and measure things like park effect, they discovered that the great red Sox teams of the 1970s-- which came tantalizingly close to the ultimate success-- were actually very good pitching teams, despite their reputation for power and offense.

Division titles - Braves (15-5, Boston has 5 WC)
League pennants - Braves (5-3?)
World Series Titles - Tie

The Braves may have gone through the doldrums of the 80s (Boston had the same from 79 to mid 80s), but their nearly unprecedented sustained success/contention from the 90s on really should count for something.  I could be wrong, but has any other professional franchise been close to their record of division titles?

It could be me, but I think the story of the Red Sox has been romanticized a bit too much.  But then again, maybe I give too much weight to prolonged sustained success.