Let the Games Begin!

As this is written, it is nine hours from the beginning of the 2007 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and some team from Colorado called the Rockies. We have several predictions.

• The games will start far too late, and they will be over far too late. During the regular season, 7 p.m. worked well as a starting time, but television advertisers have pushed the games into "prime time," starting at 8:30 and getting over after midnight. This is no way to treat a sport that used to involve the enthusiasms of children as well as night-owls.

• The Red Sox will win in six. They might win in four, except that the place the Rockies play in has thin air.

• The main drama will be finding out who contributes more: the Sox’ astounding array of veterans like Ramirez, Ortiz, Schilling, Lowell, Beckett and Varitek, or the bounding newcomers who have added so much to our pleasure this year: Pedroia, Matsuzaka, Okajima and the latest sparkler, Jacoby Ellsbury. The four of them nearly won Game 7 over the Indians all by themselves.

• Jonathan Papelbon’s stare from the mound, as fearsome as Bob Gibson’s, will freeze the Rockies hearts as cold as the snow that fell in their stadium last week.

Let the Fall Classic begin!