AT ABOUT 10.40pm here on Wednesday, the moon turned red. It was a “Blood Moon”, a lunar eclipse reaching its most mystical phase. The change of colour had a ready scientific explanation: it was caused by the Moon passing through the Earth’s shadow. Far below, in a packed Busch Stadium, something really supernatural was happening.

Edgar Renteria, of the St Louis Cardinals, swung and smacked a ball back at Keith Foulke, the pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, who caught it instinctively in his glove. For a fraction of an instant, Foulke paused, perhaps in astonishment, then dashed towards first base and gently lobbed the ball to Doug Mientkiewicz before Renteria could get there. And with that the Red Sox won the World Series, ending 86 years of disappointment and bringing to a glorious close one of the great chapters of American sports history.

Their heroes on the night were Johnny Damon, with a solo home run in the first inning, Trot Nixon, who drove in two runs with a double in the third, and Derek Lowe, who pitched seven scoreless innings.

Mientkiewicz’s catch completed a 3-0 win for the Sox and a 4-0 sweep of the best-of seven-game series. It brought them their first championship since 1918 and lifted the “Curse of the Bambino”, which was supposed to have chained the club to perpetual failure because they had sold the game’s greatest player, Babe Ruth, to the New York Yankees in 1920 so the team’s owner could finance a Broadway production. Or so legend has it.

Curse or not, the Red Sox Nation has certainly had to bear its share of heartbreak. Last year they were only five outs away from beating the hated Yankees and reaching the series only for Grady Little, their manager, to leave a tiring Pedro Martínez on the mound too long. Eighteen years ago, they came closer still, being one strike from clinching the World Series against the New York Mets, only to let the title slip away after a routine ground ball rolled between the legs of Bill Buckner, the first baseman.

Little and Buckner are just the most recent “goats” whose reputations have been sacrificed on the altar of the curse, and for them there will be relief at last. But this triumph belongs mainly to the “group of idiots” who won it.

Given the name by Damon because of their frat-house attitude to playing the game and their wild appearance, the anarchic tribe who beat St Louis will be remembered for their eccentricities and collective brilliance. Damon himself, for example, has long hair and a beard, a revolutionary look in a sport that tends to favour the buttoned-down appearance of the litigation lawyer.

Martínez and Manny Ramírez, who was named Most Valuable Player of the World Series, also have long hair. Bronson Arroyo has blond corn rows. Kevin Millar, sometime first baseman, has his hair dyed and a goatee that he admits make him look like “an Amish porn star”. In fact, the only member of the group who looks like a lawyer is the general manager, Theo Epstein, 30, a graduate from Yale and the Sabermetrics school of statistical thinking made famous by Michael Lewis’s bestseller, Moneyball.

Epstein handled his team of mavericks with maturity, deciding it was best to allow them to be themselves to cope with the pressure of playing for the Red Sox. Peter Gammons, the most respected baseball analyst in the US and a Red Sox fan, put this in context by saying that Boston’s success would be “far and away the greatest sports story in New England history”. And this is an area that is home to the Super Bowl champions, the Patriots.

Years of failure have made the Red Sox the only rival to the Yankees (whose trademark has been success) as the greatest sports franchise in the United States. Now the Red Sox Nation must get used to being just another success story.

The Chicago Cubs are left alone as the kings of hard-luck stories. Their own Billy Goat Curse may be the only supernatural force left.

Maybe next year.