He's back in the saddle again, this time out in La-La Land, in a featured role as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Homespun and likeable, he's got a new team, a fresh start,  and 3000 miles between himself and the Red Sox nation that villified him.  Add to that a World Series title for the BoSox , and you might think that would be enough to make Grady's last appearance on the big screen fade to black.........wouldn't you?

After all, the man did manage to produce 188 wins in 2 seasons with the Red Sox.

And, under his direction, the Red Sox won a division series and extended the Yankees to seven games in the 2003 ALCS.

Add to that - and to his credit - that he managed during the still-golden age of Red Sox suffering, in the year 1 BCE (Before the Championship Era), when Bucky and Billy nightmares were still being relived whenever the Red Sox got to postseason play.

So, why belittle Grady?

Grady' wrote his own epitaph as he moseyed out to the mound that fateful night in Yankee Stadium, and he went from bit player to anti-hero in the blink of a communal raised eye-brow - a blink shared by every fan, usher, and 97 year-old Red Sox great grandmother.   By sending Pedro out for the eighth inning and then refusing to relieve him while a 3-run lead melted away, he delivered the tour-de-force performance of his career (albeit, the dark side of the tour-de-force), one that the Red Sox nation, with memories etched by dramatic failure, will never quite forget.

You might think that finally winning a World Series would take a bit of the sting out of that painful memory.   After all, now that the curse has been broken, every Red Sox fan has been assured of dying happy.  But that would deny Red Sox fans of their baseball-god given birthright.  Born and bred to disappointment and despair in the face of countless Yankee dynasties, Red Sox fans survived and thrived for 86 years on a steady diet of shared disappointment, waking nightmares, and seven-game, on-the-brink failures.

One World Series title is not nearly enough to dim the bad memories Red Sox fans so love to relish and relive.  Grady's Gaff gets filed neatly away in the Red Sox nightmare folder, right behind Billy's Blunder and Bucky's Bomb.

And for a true blue Red Sox fan, that's just as it should be.