Here we go again.

After a meaningless game against the Baltimore Orioles this afternoon, the Red Sox will hop aboard the team charter and head west for the postseason.

The Sox have been battling over the pennant for the past 103 years, and they’ve only qualified for the playoffs 16 times. That’s once every 6 years. Not something that happens every day.

Of course, World Championships are even rarer.

Eight-six years is a long time to wait for anything, and Sox fans are more than tired of waiting for their team.

There are several steps to a championship, and the Red Sox have made it through the first. They’re in the postseason. Today marks the finish line of the marathon regular season, but the starting line to the second season.

It’s an exciting time for Red Sox fans, but it’s also a time filled with trepidation.

That’s because we all know that six months of hopes can be flushed down the toilet very quickly. Like the three-playoff-games-and-out postseason of 1995, when the Division Champion Red Sox were swept away by the Cleveland Indians.

Or, the postseason can be a long, agonizing period of weeks.

Remember last October?

As New England “Cowboy Upped,” Aaron Boone shot our cowboys down with an 11th-inning home run in the wee hours of the morning. Tim Wakefield went from ALCS MVP to extra-innings loser, and we went home disappointed. Again.

Could this be the year? Of course it could. Here are several reasons why:

The pitching. Curt Schilling is (rightfully) the Game 1 starter. He won’t win the Cy Young Award (that goes to Minnesota’s Johan Santana), but he wins my vote as “The Man I’d Most Want on the Mound in a Key Game.” As he told the world in the in a Ford commercial this spring, Schilling came to Boston “to break an 86-year-old curse.” His 21 wins gave the Sox a chance to do just that and now he’s got a chance to take them to the next step.

The offense. Once again, the Red Sox have put up impressive numbers. While they haven’t quite matched the eye-popping totals of a year ago, they came pretty close. The bashers have been doing it all year long, and there’s no reason to think they won’t be doing it again this week. Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz could finish up as the first American League teammates to each post a .300 batting average, 40 home runs and 100 RBI since Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig did it with the Yankees in 1931.

The defense. The biggest lesson of the 2004 Red Sox is that defense counts. Earlier this season, the “forever .500” Sox were giving out unearned runs like Christmas cards. Now, the “D” is getting the job done. Think about this team leading a playoff game in the late innings, and fielding a defense of Bill Mueller, Orlando Cabrera, Pokey Reese and Doug Mientkiewicz. It’s a long way from Kevin Youkilis, Nomar Garciaparra, Mark Bellhorn and Kevin Millar.

The pinch runner. Dave Roberts might be the fastest man in the American League. He needs to pinch run at least once in every playoff game this autumn.

So there it is, and here we go. Now, if the Red Sox manager can just learn to pull Pedro after the seventh inning, we might just be all right.

Lewiston native Tom Caron covers the Red Sox for NESN.