So this is how it happens this time ...

Pesky holds the ball ... Denny Galehouse ... Aparicio falls rounding third ... Ed Armbrister and Jim Burton ... Bucky Dent ... Bill Buckner ...

And now in the spectacular season of 2002 ... Donald Fehr.

Fast-forward to Oct. 1. The Red Sox have just won a major league-record 117 games. They've got Pedro Martinez, Derek Lowe, John Burkett, and Darren Oliver - all 20-game winners - lined up for the first round of the playoffs. On the heels of a Super Bowl crown and an NBA title, Boston is braced for the end of its long baseball championship drought.

And then it turns out the only thing we have to Fear is Fehr himself: The Players Association goes on strike, wiping out the World Series for the second time in nine seasons.

And the Red Sox find yet another ghoulish way to deny New England its hardball crown. A new twist on an old plot. A new way to lose. A new meaning to the old Jimmy Piersall biography: Fehr Strikes Out.

The doomsday scenario has been kicking around New England for the last couple of days since it was learned that major league players were discussing possible strike dates. Some cynical Sox souls feel Messrs. Fehr and Selig could be the Armbrister and Burton of the new century.

Any baseball strike is a deadly, depressing development, but this is New England, where it's always about us and it's easy to see ourselves as the ultimate victims if there should be a strike in this (thus far) most magical of seasons.

It would not be the first time a labor issue came back to bite Red Sox Nation. In 1972 - the year the Sox finished one-half game behind the Detroit Tigers in the American League East, the Sox suffered because they played one fewer game than the Tigers. It was an aftereffect of a 10-day strike at the start of the season. The Sox lost seven games to the strike, the Tigers only six. As a result, the Sox finished out of the running, even though they had the same number of losses as the Tigers.

The Cincinnati Reds were cheated worse as a result of the lengthy midseason strike of 1981. A goofy postseason was established honoring winners of each half of the split season. In the National League West, the Dodgers won the first half, the Astros won the second half, but the Reds won three more games than either team, yet didn't make the playoffs.

The soon-to-be-contracted Montreal Expos were derailed by the strike of 1994. In what was undoubtedly the franchise's best chance to win a World Series, the Expos were a baseball-best 74-40 (.649) when the fellas packed their stuff and went home in August.

Now it could be the Red Sox' turn to cry again.

Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino thinks there has been an overreaction to the sabre-rattling that came out of New York earlier this week.

''Chill out,'' said Lucchino. ''There are big issues to be resolved, but let's not overreact to every little nuance of conversation. I don't want to overreact to one reporter's interpretation of some very general remarks by a Players Association leader. And I think that is what has happened.''

OK, Larry. But what if the Sox did run the table, then were denied a chance to shine in October?

''I think our fans would feel a pretty acute sense of deprivation, to put it mildly,'' he acknowledged. ''So we're not even going to allow ourselves to think in those terms. There's a danger that too much speculating can cause problems.''

We can only hope he's right. But one agent who was at Fehr's conclave in New York earlier this week believes there is a very grave danger of a work stoppage this season.

Fehr simply doesn't trust the commissioner. And the commissioner is tired of having his head handed to him by the still-undefeated Players Association.

There are never winners in these things. But rarely have the Sox had more at stake. New England is dizzy about this (thus far) magical team.

The annual feeling that this is the year feels somewhat valid. And now there's the threat of a strike starting Oct. 1, the first day of the playoffs.

Needless worry? Perhaps. Overreaction? Maybe. But these are the Red Sox, and it's always something with the hometown team.

This time, they could fall victim to Fehr and loathing on the campaign trail.

By Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe Staff

This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 5/17/2002.

Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.