BOSTON (AP) – The city will toast its first World Series champions in 86 years with a parade Saturday that will stretch from the Fenway to City Hall Plaza, but won’t include the traditional rally at its end because of concerns about the size of the crowd and security.

Mayor Thomas Menino announced the plans at a news conference Thursday with Red Sox president Larry Lucchino. The team swept the World Series in four games, giving the city its first baseball championship since 1918.

An estimated 1.5 million people attended the Feb. 3 parade for the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots. And about 1.2 million celebrated the Patriots’ first Super Bowl win in 2002 – the first Boston pro sports title since 1986. Both celebrations included a rally on City Hall Plaza.

Officials said Saturday’s Red Sox crowd could be twice as big, partly because of the team’s enormous popularity across New England, and partly because of a championship drought that has spanned generations and included several agonizingly near misses.

The mayor, who described the parade as a “rolling rally,” said there will be no planned stops along the approximately three-mile route, because of safety concerns.

Like the Patriots, the Red Sox players will ride in “Duck Boats,” Boston’s famous amphibious tourist vehicles, equipped with microphones to allow them to speak to the fans en route.

The mayor said police will be out in force to make sure things don’t get out of hand, as they did last week when a college student was killed by police firing pepper spray-filled pellets into a rowdy crowd of fans celebrating the Red Sox’s pennant-clinching win over the New York Yankees.

“Public safety is our number one priority,” Menino said. “Let’s show the team what the fans are made of and behave in a way we can all be proud of.

Lucchino said team officials will take the World Series trophy to all six New England states in the coming weeks to share the team’s success with fans across the region.

“We are all in uncharted territory here,” Lucchino said. “But we do know that it will give our fans an opportunity to salute our players and it will give our players a chance to salute our fans.”

The parade will start at 10 a.m. at the intersection of Boylston and Kilmarnock streets, in the Fenway, following Boylston to the Boston Common, then turning onto Tremont Street and following that past City Hall, ending at Cambridge and New Chardon streets.

Officials want the festivities to end by 1:30 p.m.

“We kept the faith, now let us keep the peace,” Menino said.