Phew. They made it.

Hey, maybe you knew it all along.

Perhaps you never lost faith when the Red Sox lost their season opener to the vaunted Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

The thought of Chad Fox, Mike Timlin and Brandon Lyon as a three-headed closer didn’t bring you nightmares.

You took stock as Boston acquired Bill Mueller and David Ortiz instead of Bartolo Colon and kept on singing, Theo is just alright with me.

Congratulations. You’re an icon of faith in the home team.

I’m not ashamed to be a late arrival on the playoff express.

And now that we know for sure the Sox will live to beat the odds for at least one more week, I’m expecting much more than that.

Misguided homer? That’s OK, because logic would label me precisely that.

Fueled by a trade for Shannon Stewart and the awakening of its pitching staff, the Minnesota Twins were the best team in baseball in the second half.

The Yankees are, well, still the Yankees. An all-star team or an embarrassment of riches, depending upon which side of their camp you stand. By any other name, they’re dangerous.

Oakland remains the trendy pick to win the American League pennant for what feels like the 23rd straight year, although in reality it’s only the fourth. The Athletics haven’t proven anything in recent division series, losing each in the maximum five games.

When it comes to logic, however, the Red Sox are like Teflon. Nothing has stuck to them since spring training.

You say not enough pitching? Phooey. Without apology, Tim Wakefield and John Burkett jog out to the mound and the Sox support them with eight or nine runs.

Not enough stolen bases or sacrifice bunts to win in the postseason? Nice try, but who needs that? At last check, I believe Boston had something like 16 guys on the roster with 20 or more home runs.

There are bullpen problems? Point given, but let me remind you that two years ago, the Arizona Diamondbacks were able to overcome the obstacle of having Byung-Hyun Kim as their closer. Besides, when he blows a save, the Sox seem to go out and win it in the 10th.

Best of all, they do it with people who would have been considered the unlikeliest of heroes at your rotisserie draft back in March. Those late-inning blasts by Todd Walker and Ortiz versus Baltimore on Tuesday night were the most dramatic Red Sox home runs in quick succession since Don Baylor and Dave Henderson gave Al Michaels a “do-you-believe-in-miracles” moment against the Angels in the 1986 ALCS.

On this occasion, as was the case that Sunday afternoon, the perpetrators were two guys who hadn’t been wearing the uniform very long.

The most endearing quality about these Red Sox is that they seem to win not because of their superstars but in spite of them.

No offense to Nomar Garciaparra, but Thursday night’s home run excluded, he’s been swinging a toothpick in September. As for Manny Ramirez, the Labor Day win in Philadelphia that nearly everyone in the clubhouse believes set the stage for the stretch drive happened on one of his, uh, personal days.

Much as we cringe at the mere mention of Casey Fossum and Ramiro Mendoza, both of them picked up some huge wins as last-minute stopgaps for a brittle Pedro Martinez in late spring and early summer.

This is a team that those of us in the crowd who associate ourselves with Charlie Brown can love.

Even after a decade of the numbers being doubled, unless you are the Yankees or Braves, playoff berths in Major League Baseball are a rare treat. Eight of 30 teams make the cut.

Boston’s trip to Oakland marks only its eighth playoff appearance in my lifetime, nine if you count the day Mickey Mantle inhabited Bucky Dent’s body for a half-inning. Some of those have been forgettable. Others, including the aforementioned 1978 debacle, I wish I could forget.

Now that they’re in, something tells me that the Red Sox will make October 2003 unforgettable.

My advice, then: Don’t let history or logic dissuade you from watching.

Kalle Oakes is sports editor and can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].