Orlando Cabrera and the Red Sox need one more win to end the 86-year-old journey. Stephen Dunn/Getty Images

ST. LOUIS -- The story of the '04 Red Sox belongs now to a generation of faithful Boston fans. In years to come, during the long, harsh New England winters, they will tell the tale of a scruffy team that did what no Boston team had done since the time of the great Babe Ruth.

Yeah, kids, the Bambino played for us once. But that's another story.

The story of the '04 Sox is a fantastic one of near disasters and miraculous comebacks, of Damon and Manny and Pedro and the lumbering designated hitter, Ortiz. Of that crazy Kevin Millar, and the brick house of a catcher, Varitek. And of the gritty right-hander Schilling, of course, a man who bled for the Sox. Literally bled.

The storytellers will wax about the summer of '04, the charge for the pennant, grabbing the wild card and sweeping the Angels and about coming back from 0-3 -- the first team to do that, ever -- to beat the hated Yankees in the American League Championship Series.

They will skim over most of the World Series, dull as it is. This is a fantastic story. But the last chapter, not yet finished, needs some work.

Still, the story will have a happy ending. The Sox will win the World Series. We can say it now, can't we?

The Red Sox will win the World Series.

It may not happen Wednesday in Game 4 at Busch Stadium, and maybe not even Thursday there in Game 5. But the Sox will win the Series because, as flawed as they are, they have better pitching than the Cardinals and better hitting. It's as simple as that.

The Sox players want nothing to do with that kind of talk. The Sox, more than most teams, have made it to the brink of this championship, to the ending of their story, by being singularly single-minded. They don't plan on changing that now.

"We just have to maintain focus," said the catcher, Jason Varitek, after Game 3 on Tuesday, icebags strapped all over his body, ace bandages wrapped around his tree trunk torso. "You guys jump up and down. We have to maintain focus."

Even as they completely manhandle the overmatched Cards, up 3-0 and feeling strong, the Sox are not wavering.

"We have a mission," said Gabe Kapler, the balding, rock-jawed outfielder, "we have a goal. And it's not complete."

But it's close. Everyone knows it. Everyone feels it.

"It ain't over," said Keith Foulke, the stone-faced and stone cold closer who has shut down the Cardinals this Series. "It ain't over."

Well, if it ain't over now, it will be soon. The Sox have collapsed before. Comebacks have been launched before. But not this time. Not against this team. The Sox know miracle comebacks can happen. No way do they let it happen to them.

No, the Red Sox will win the World Series.

The Sox will win the Series.

Take a sip of that. Roll that around on the tongue. After 86 years -- many wars have been won and lost in that time, nations have crumbled and risen, polio has been cured, man has been to the moon and back, televisions are in every home, phones are in every pocket -- Red Sox Nation finally will have a World Series win.

And then what?

It is said that an entire generation of Sox fans, holding on for just this ending, will drift off forever, a contented smile on their faces as they go. It's just as likely, and a lot less morbid, that an entire generation of Sox fans will be conceived the night the Sox win the Series.

The curse of the Bambino, all but exposed in Boston's back-from-the-dead win over the Yankees, will be forever exposed as a fairy tale.

Cubs fans, who have been without a Series title longer than Boston fans have, will become the de facto sorriest fans in baseball. They will gain a strange pleasure in this,knowing both that a win can be had and that they are now No. 1 in their long-standing misery.

The city of Boston, hopefully, will not burn. Maybe it will just sit there, like old-time Sox fans, in a happy stupor, a silly smile plastered all over its ruddy mug for weeks to come.

The Red Sox, a proud franchise with a checkered past, may not win again for a while. But the glow of this win will last.

Pedro Martinez, the live-wire right-hander who won Game 3 for the Sox, is a free agent after the season and may move on. So, too, might Derek Lowe, who starts Game 4 on Wednesday. Others will take their place. The Sox will survive.

The story of the '04 Red Sox may not be the greatest baseball story ever told. But it will be up there on the same shelf. It will be, at the very least, the greatest Red Sox story ever.

All it needs now is an ending.

John Donovan is a senior writer for SI.com.