OK, I’ll give the Red Sox the whole nation thing.

Hard not to after following Boston through the playoffs last year and watching the throngs of faithful who always seem to show up no matter where they’re playing. The one enduring moment of a short World Series in Denver last year was the sight of maybe 5,000 of them gathered above the dugout chanting, cheering and calling player’s names long after the Red Sox finished their sweep of the Rockies.

For sure, no one else has a nation. Judging from the reaction of their fans this season, the Rays can barely claim a city.

The Red Sox Nation will be hard to miss this week as the West Coast chapter gathers in Anaheim for what now seems like an annual rite of autumn. They’ll be loud, boisterous and about as smug as you would expect them to be now that their team has won two of the last four World Series.

They weren’t always this way. The same fans were once resigned to live out their lives under the curse of the Bambino, content only because they had a quirky little ballpark where they could go to share their misery with others just like them.

Then Dave Roberts steals a base, the Red Sox beat the Yankees four straight, and the culture of a nation changed.

So, too, has a team that in just a few short years has gone from the scrappy underdog that never could to the team that almost everybody outside the Red Sox Nation will be rooting against in the playoffs. Once mildly amusing because of their 86-year record of futility, the Red Sox aren’t so cute anymore now that they spend money and win much like their rivals in pinstripes did so successfully for so many years.

Besides, there’s only room for one cuddly team in the playoffs this year, and the equally big-spending Cubs get that nod, largely, it seems, because they grow ivy on their outfield walls and haven’t won a World Series now in exactly a century. Like the Red Sox, the Cubs also have a curse of their own, something about a goat that you’d have to get a real Cubs fan to explain.

They still hope against hope that this will finally be their year, but you could make the case that Steve Bartman did the Cubs a favor by getting in the way of a ball in a playoff game they had no business losing five years ago. Everyone loves a winner, but the Cubs wouldn’t be nearly as lovable if they, like the Red Sox, had won a couple World Series titles by now.

There’s not a lot to love about the Red Sox anymore, either, not when compared to the team that did the impossible in 2004 and beat the Yankees before sweeping St. Louis in the World Series.

That team had Johnny Damon leading off with hair flying everywhere and Big Papi and Manny Ramirez combining for 84 home runs. It had Curt Schilling’s famous bloody sock and a rotation that also included Pedro Martinez and Derek Lowe.

More important, though, it had an underdog carrying the desperate hopes of a city – no, make that a nation – against the most evil of empires. Down 3-0 and trailing in game 4 against the Yankees, the Red Sox somehow managed to overcome all odds and win not only that game, but the next seven, too.

They’re a nation, all right. Clad in red and ready to travel.

Put some pinstripes on them, though, and they’d look suspiciously like an empire.