Boston sports fans speak of the 2004 Red Sox playoff run as they would their marriage or the birth of their child. Cut them some slack: before that season, the Red Sox had endured 86 years without a World Series title, a period known as the Curse of the Bambino. The name comes from the ill-advised 1920 trade of Babe Ruth, then early in his career, to the New York Yankees, where the man became mythic. The curse was more than an absence of championship rings: pitfalls plagued the team in the form of unlucky, sometimes unbelievable defeats. It took a band of bearded “idiots” (as the 2004 team was coined) with names like David Ortiz, Johnny Damon, Pedro Martinez, and Tim Wakefield, as well as an unprecedented playoff comeback against the Yankees, to break free of Bambino. The new docuseries The Comeback features the major figures who led the charge—it’s dramatic, funny, and for Bostonians a cause for tears of joy.
—Jack Sullivan