The World Series came to an end Wednesday with the Boston Red Sox taking home the trophy after a resounding 6-1 victory over the Cardinals to take the series in six games. After a dismal 2012 season which saw the team play to a 69-93 record, they made a complete turn around this year to win it all. This makes them just the second team, along with the 1991 Minnesota Twins, to go from last place to winning the World Series. The Red Sox now hold the most World Series titles of any team in the millennium, with victories in 2004, 2007, and now 2013.

Though they went through the playoffs without facing a single elimination game, it was no easy road for the Red Sox. They faced a gauntlet of some of the game’s best starting pitchers and managed to best most of them. The Sox handed losses to Cy Young winners David Price and Justin Verlander as well as likely 2013 American League Cy Young winner Max Scherzer.

First, they took down their division rivals, the Tampa Bay Rays, in four games in the ALDS with an offensive attack. The Sox scored 26 runs across those games, emphasizing the fact that they had the best offense in baseball this year with an MLB leading 5.27 runs per game.

The ALCS was a battle the Sox won by timely hitting. After nearing going without a hit in game 1, the Sox’s offense struggled again in game 2, and it looked like they would go down in the series 0-2. Entering the eighth inning they were down 5-1 when the legend, “Big Papi” David Ortiz, came to the plate with the bases loaded and added to his postseason lore, hitting a grand slam to tie the game. Though the playoffs were the very definition of a team effort by the Red Sox, if any man deserved to be considered the MVP, it would be Papi, who hit .353/.500/.706 in the playoffs with five home runs.

Despite a tough loss from an obstruction call in game 3 of the World Series, Boston refused to let the St. Louis Cardinals keep the momentum. Behind Clay Buchholz, who was working through an injury that kept him from throwing into the 90s, the Sox beat the Cardinals 4-1 in game 4 and never looked back. The team’s pitchers worked tremendously in the World Series, holding the Cardinals to just one run in three games and recording a 1.84 ERA for the series, the lowest mark since the 1983 Baltimore Orioles.

The future for the Red Sox looks bright, a fact highlighted by the 21-year-old phenomenon Xander Bogaerts, who took over third base midway through the ALCS and triple slashed .296/.412/.481 the rest of the way. Baseball America ranked the Sox’s minor league farm system as the one with the most talent closest to the majors, a boon to a team with as many free agents as the Sox have this offseason — a list which includes Jacoby Ellsbury, Mike Napoli, Stephen Drew, and Jarrod Saltalamacchia.

Overall, it was a fantastic season for the Boston Red Sox, which provided the citizens of Boston a diversion from the events of the Boston Marathon attacks. The team embraced the slogan “Boston Strong” and carried a jersey with Boston’s area code on the back everywhere they went this season. Second baseman Dustin Pedroia had this to say during the celebration on Saturday, “We played for the whole city, what the city went through.”