After weeks of tempering playoff talk and shrugging off postseason decisions that loomed closer by the day, the Sox can finally start peeking ahead to their fifth postseason berth in the last six seasons.

Tuesday night’s victory marked Boston’s 92nd of the season and signified the magical ‘W’ that punched their playoff ticket – a win that likely locks up the AL Wild Card and sets up a first round divisional series matchup against the mighty Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

The Halos aren’t the free-swinging and power-challenged Angels teams that have been easily dispatched by the Sox over the last few years, and have instead averaged a .345 on base percentage and 5.3 runs per game since acquiring Mark Teixeira during the month of July. The switch-hitting first baseman has simply changed everything for the Angels, who toted around a .318 on base percentage and averaged 4.3 runs per game prior to Teixeira’s arrival on the Angels Ballpark scene. 

But enough about future playoff foes.

Tuesday night’s win bestowed the Sox with a fleeting, champagne-and-beer soaked moment to toast success after a seasonal grind that included casting off the petulant Manny Ramirez and enduring the myriad of injuries that struck Boston's roster all season long.

 “You know there was a lot of stuff going on with a lot of crazy injuries and all of that crazy stuff at the deadline, but this team – in the end – really overcame,” said Sox 1B Sean Casey. “It’s one of those things where you can really come together as a team, and I think that we definitely did. That’s a special part of it for me.”

Many celebrants in the postgame locker room pointed to the trade deadline acquisition of OF Jason Bay as the turning point in Boston’s season – the first of a set of falling dominoes that hardened the Olde Towne Team into a playoff caliber squad. 

The Ramirez fiasco – a situation where a superstar player seemingly held the barrel of a loaded gun at Boston’s temple over a contractual dispute -- could have torn their baseball season asunder, but instead the Sox adopted a team-first brand of ball after the dread-locked individualist’s departure to Los Angeles.

They proved to be a baseball team made of scrap metal that simply wouldn’t give in: whether they were in the throes of offensive suffering at the hands of a Chicago White Sox lefty named Jon Danks’ no-hit stuff on a humid August night at US Cellular Field; or the Sox simply refusing to give up in a memorable 11 inning game in Toronto that was finally decided by a decidedly clutch home run off the bat of a rookie shortstop named Jed Lowrie.

The Sox, who were three games out in the AL East when the three-team Ramirez deal set off a seismic blast in Boston on July 31, instead went 10-3 in the first 13 games of the post-Manny era and kept themselves squarely in the postseason hunt. It didn’t guarantee the Sox of any playoff glory, but it allowed them to integrate Bay into the Sox mix without missing even a beat.

It’s not much of a chore to integrate when you score 37 runs, knock in 37 runs and put together a .910 OPS in 45 games since pulling on Red Stockings for the very first time, and Bay has effectively silenced those wondering whether the quiet outfielder from Western Canada could handle pressurized ballgames after languishing in Baseball Siberia prior to July 31.

“It’s great that we were together as a team down the stretch and I think we’ve been together the whole year as an organization,” said Sox GM Theo Epstein. “After all the deals at the end of July, getting off to a good start in August was pretty big. I thought we gained a lot of momentum in the month of August. The playoffs obviously weren’t assured at that time, but our guys played really good baseball.”

The Ramirez/Bay swap will ultimately be judged by how the Sox fare in the upcoming playoffs, but simple postseason chatter is proof that optimism is flowing from the first of the Red Sox Nation precinct’s that are reporting.