Red Moon Rising

Strange things transpire when the planets and stars are aligned. Consider a chilly night in late October when the moon was full and goblins had started to take wing. Red, the favored color of Boston and St. Louis, for a Camelot moment was freed from its sentence as enemy of blue. And for nearly four hours, a deeply divided nation enjoyed a Rodney King get-along moment.

We’re talking, of course, about Wednesday night’s total eclipse of the moon, which, like the final World Series game, was visible from the mountains to the prairies. Democrats, Republicans and the shrinking circle of undecided voters watched as the shining moon slipped behind the Earth’s shadow, transforming into a dark, red orb.

It can be said with certainty that the next total lunar eclipse visible across the country will occur in 2008. No such guarantees in baseball, where the ghosts of Babe Ruth and a billy goat hold sway.

Pitchers Derek Lowe and Pedro Martinez are among Red Sox free agents who could scatter like leaves before spring training camp breaks. So who knows when the franchise again will field a squad capable of mounting an unprecedented comeback after falling three games behind in the league championship series, and then sweeping four straight World Series games from the St. Louis Cardinals.

Boston’s championship season finally eclipsed the Curse of the Bambino, which had darkened New England since 1918. That’s when the Red Sox beat the Chicago Cubs for their last World Series win.

Fans of lost causes and curses still have the hapless Cubs -- and the Cubs have the specter of William “Billy Goat” Sianis, said to have put a hex on the team after he and his goat were ejected from the fourth game of the 1945 World Series.

The tentative schedule for the 2005 season has the newly minted world champions traveling to Wrigley Field for a three-game series in June. Plenty of time, it would seem, to build a goat pen out beyond the ivy.