In 2004, the Boston Red Sox went into the season coming off a bitter, seven-game defeat to the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series, adding yet another heartbreak to the team’s seemingly endless chase for a World Series title that had eluded the franchise since 1918.

What they did not know in that moment was that the 2004 season would be something special. Not only did the Red Sox break their 86-year so-called curse, sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals to win their first World Series in living memory, the way they got there made MLB history.

The Yankees had been the dominant team of the past decade at the that time, winning four World Series and appearing in two more — and qualifying for the postseason every year since 1995. In 2004, the Red Sox faced their arch-rivals once again in the ALCS. This time, they fell into a deep hole, fast. They lost the first two games at Yankee Stadium, then returned home to Fenway where they dropped Game 3 by a dispiriting score of 19-8.

And then the unthinkable happened. The Red Sox scrapped and clawed their way to three straight wins before dominating the Yankees in Game 7, 10-3, becoming the first and — even 20 years later — only MLB team ever to win a seven-game series by overcoming a 3-0 deficit.

One of the most important and colorful members of that now-iconic 2004 Red Sox team was outfielder Johnny Damon, then 30 years old and already a 10-year veteran. It was Damon who blasted a grand slam in the bottom of the second inning in ALCS Game 7 off Yankees ace Kevin Brown to give Boston a 6-0 lead. The Red Sox never looked back.

In a new interview with the sports news platform RG, Damon — who was later a player on the Yankees’ 2009 World Series-winning team — offered his evaluation of the current version of the Red Sox, two decades after he helped carve out an MLB legend

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His prediction? The Red Sox will win 85 games and compete for an American League Wild Card spot. Last season, Boston won only 81 and finished out of the playoff picture. The team that took the third and final Wild Card spot in 2024, the Detroit Tigers, won 86 games.

“I think they’re going to get out there and compete,” Damon told interviewer DJ Siddiqi. “I mean, there’s some teams that are just loaded. And you need guys to step up. I would probably say 85 wins. You have to start off April well, not that you end up cruising, but you just start playing with a lot more confidence and try to beat up teams when they’re down early on.”

Damon added that he was not wedded to his forecast, and he hopes the Red Sox will do better than 85 wins, even if they have to use his modest prediction to motivate them.

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“Hopefully those guys can take a look at this and say, ‘Let’s show Johnny Damon that we’re a lot better than we are.’ I always loved that because when I was on the Royals, we were always picked to finish in last place,” he said.

Damon was the Kansas City Royals’ first-round draft pick in 1992 and played for the team over the first six years of his career, before heading to the Oakland A’s after 2000 as part of a blockbuster, three-team trade. He became a free agent after the 2001 season and signed with the Red Sox.

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