When the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, it was a BIG DEAL.  You have to understand New Englanders and the Red Sox, but trust me, it was a BIG HUGE HONKIN' DEAL.  You remember when Neil Armstrong took that first stp on the moon?  That was peanuts compared to the 2004 World Series.  I'm talking a really really big deal here, folks.

This kind takes some wind out of the joy:

Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, the sluggers who propelled the Boston Red Sox to end an 86-year World Series championship drought and to capture another title three years later, were among the roughly 100 Major League Baseball players to test positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003, according to lawyers with knowledge of the results.

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Baseball first tested for steroids in 2003, and the results from that season were supposed to remain anonymous. But for reasons that have never been made clear, the results were never destroyed and the first batch of positives has come to be known among fans and people in baseball as “the list.” The information was later seized by federal agents investigating the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes, and the test results remain the subject of litigation between the baseball players union and the government.

So basically, an argument can be made that… well, here's how a Sadly, No blogger puts it:

Cheating Boston Cheaters Cheated Their Cheating Way To World Cheat-manship

Maybe, but given the size of the list, it seems that the Yankees (who the Sox overtook after a 3-0 deficit in the AL Pennant) and just about every other player in the league were on steroids.  So…. there.  Right?