OAKLAND, Calif. - Sixteen years later, and Dwight Evans has never watched the tape of Game 6.

''Too painful,'' he said yesterday afternoon. ''Two outs in the last inning, two strikes on the hitter, nobody on base. I happened to glance over toward left field, and there it was on the scoreboard, `Congratulations Red Sox, 1986 world champions,' first time since 1918.

''Bloop single, no big deal. Next hitter single, no big deal. Two strikes on the next hitter, another single. Ah, you know the rest of the story. That's it. I don't even want to talk about it anymore.''

Why was he talking about it at all? Because Evans, perhaps more than anyone else wearing a Red Sox uniform yesterday, understands who will be the last to be convinced of the worthiness of a team off to its best start in nearly a half-century.

It won't be the Oakland Athletics, who turned out to be less of a test and more of a pop quiz for the Sox, who swept them three straight to run their winning streak to nine and their overall record to a mind-bending 24-7.

''They're definitely a good team,'' said A's ace Tim Hudson, who yesterday gave up an RBI double to Rey Sanchez and home runs to Jose Offerman and Shea Hillenbrand and was outpitched by Derek Lowe. ''I don't think their record's a joke. I think they're that good.''

The skeptics are all back home.

''We've come so close, the fans just want to see about this team, they want to wait and see,'' Evans said. ''They've been hurt so much.

''But I believe this team definitely has the ability to win. We've still got a long road - what do we have, 131 games to go? - but this team definitely has the talent to win, no question. Whether they do or not is up to them, but there's a nice feeling on this club. Everybody is well prepared, as well as any team I've ever seen, and they work hard.

''There would be nothing better for us, and the city. It would be a dream come true.''

Dave Albee is a columnist for the Marin (Calif.) Independent Journal, which is a long way from the Maine woods in which he grew up. Albee is from Dover-Foxcroft, a lumber town smack in the middle of the state.

Yesterday, Albee brought a T-shirt to the game: Boston Red Sox, 1986 World Champions. A friend, Mike Duca, bought it for him on Lansdowne Street after Game 5, a Red Sox win. Duca also brought him back a bottle of Sam Adams, which at the time was only distributed locally.

That beer still sits in a Ziploc bag in Albee's refrigerator. Albee has vowed not to open the beer until the Sox win the World Series. It's in his will that in the event he dies before the Sox win, the beer will be inherited by his daughter, Damiane, a high school teacher in North Carolina.

In 1999, when the Sox beat the Indians after Pedro Martinez threw six no-hit innings of relief, Albee's wife, Caroline, was waiting for him when he arrived home from a 49ers practice he was covering.

''Drink the beer now,'' she said.

''Hey, they're playing the Yankees next,'' Albee said, remaining true to his vow while betraying a Mainer's sense of impending doom.

Albee is older than Rickey Henderson, but still imagines the day he'll pop off that bottle cap, expiration date be damned.

''I may vomit,'' he said, ''but it will be worth it.''

Mel Hollen, who used to own Finn's on Newbury Street before it became the Capital Grille, just opened a new steakhouse in Washington Square in San Francisco. The other day, during lunch, he sat down with a couple of old friends, and out of a white cardboard box produced an old baseball the color of an overripe avocado.

A visitor from Boston couldn't help but notice. When he identified himself, Hollen stood up and held the ball over the visitor's head. ''The curse is back on,'' he said, then showed the visitor an autograph that was all but obscured by ancient grass stains but still decipherable: Babe Ruth.

Hollen may have worked in Boston, but he's originally from New Jersey. He used to be business partners with Mickey Mantle. ''The Babe signed it in Cleveland, in 1932,'' he said.

Hollen likes the mythology, but, grudgingly admitted, after sitting behind home plate for one of the Sox wins here, the reality is this Boston team has some legs. It's hard to conclude otherwise.

Manager Grady Little knows his new hometown well enough to understand, like Evans, what the prevailing feeling is back home.

''A lot of people in New England are still doubting us, and they're going to all the way through the end of October,'' he said. ''Every time we do something that thrills them a little bit and maybe erases a little bit of that doubt, we'll feel good about it.''

And if the Sox should win it all? Little smiled.

''They'll probably have doubts about next year,'' he said.

By Gordon Edes of The Boston Globe Staff

This story ran on page E1 of the Boston Globe on 5/10/2002.

Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.