BOSTON (AP) – Demand for Red Sox paraphernalia may have reached an all-time high this week.

The Souvenir Store on Yawkey Way, across the street from Fenway Park, had to shut down its Web site after it was flooded with orders – too many for the staff to fill.

The owners posted an online apology to fans, reading “We Love the Red Sox! We Love the Fans! We Love our Customers!”

“Since the playoffs we have been flooded with orders. We can’t keep up. We are putting additional staff to work nights and weekends to catch up. Our plan is to be back online when the Red Sox win the World Series in a few days. We will then offer only world championship items,” they said.

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BOSTON (AP) – Former Mayor Ray Flynn remembers working his way in to see the Red Sox play the Cardinals in the 1946 World Series.

As a 7-year-old, Flynn sold newspapers at Fenway Park all season, a job that also got him in to see his beloved Sox play in the series. Flynn was one of a group of paperboys who sold the now-defunct Boston Record American at Fenway – for 3 cents.

“That’s the only way we could get into the games,” said Flynn. “You got a little badge to sell the newspapers, then you’d get into the park to see the games. Best job I ever had,” said Flynn, who years later got into the 1986 World Series through a different job: mayor of Boston.

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BOSTON (AP) – Noel Schaub had the champagne ready to go in 1975.

He still does, and it’s the same champagne.

Schaub was 24 when he smuggled a tiny bottle of pink champagne and two plastic glasses into Game 7 of the 1975 World Series. When the Red Sox lost that year to Cincinnati, he was crushed.

He took the unopened bottle home and stashed it away for the next year … and the next, and the next, and the next.

With the arrival of each new season he taped a note with the year to the bottle.

Twenty-nine years later, the bottle is still ready, covered with yellowing labels. His youngest son brings friends over to look at it in the refrigerator, where it sits among ketchup bottles and jars of jam.

At the start of the ALCS against the Yankees, Schaubs’ sons touched the bottle for good luck.

“I tease my kids that when I do finally open that bottle, I’ll have to use it as vinegar on my salad,” the now 58-year-old father of seven from Milton told The Patriot-Ledger.

The last time he pulled out the bottle of 1975 Henri Marchant was in 1986. The Red Sox were one strike away from winning the World Series when they suffered a historic collapse. The bottle went back into the fridge, and it’s been there ever since.

If, or when, the Red Sox win, Schaub planned to open the bottle and savor it as if it were Dom Perignon, and everyone in the family gets a sip.

“We’ll stretch it. They’ll be enough,” he said. “They’ll all want a taste of it.”

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) – MIT struck a deal with students watching Wednesday’s Game 4 of the World Series: stay inside to enjoy the game with pizza and soda, and the university will pick up the tab.

Assistant Dean David N. Rogers sent an e-mail to the school’s 37 fraternities, sororities and living groups, asking students to stay away from Kenmore Square, where an Emerson College student was killed after Game 7 of the American League Championship Series.

Rogers wrote that the school would repay fraternities and sororities up to $200 for pizza and soda for students watching the game in their residences. He said students could also enjoy free food and drink at a common viewing area.

“The next few days require us all to plan for and seek opportunities where we may be safe, responsible, and enjoy the games while we cheer on the Boston Red Sox,” he wrote in the e-mail.

AP-ES-10-27-04 1741EDT