It’s been a minute since they’ve won a World Series, but you have to admit the Boston Red Sox have been on a good run to start the 21st century.

It began in 2004, when the Red Sox broke the so-called “Curse of the Bambino,” defeating the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series en route to their first World Series victory since 1918.

That set the franchise on a trajectory that saw the Sox wrest control in their storied rivalry with the Yankees, winning titles in 2007, 2013 and 2018. They’re one of only two major league franchises to have won three championships in the last 20 years — good enough to place them sixth overall on Bleacher Report’s list of “the 25 Greatest Sports Franchises of the Last Quarter Century.”

Only six Major League Baseball franchises made the list: the Red Sox at #6, the Yankees at #11, the Los Angeles Dodgers at #14, the San Francisco Giants at #20, the Houston Astros at #22, and the St. Louis Cardinals at #24.

You can quibble with the rankings — that’s what these kind of lists are for, after all — but Bleacher Report got at least five of the six teams right, if you had to include six. The Cardinals haven’t been relevant in the postseason for more than a decade, but they have only been irrelevant enough to post a losing record in two of the first 25 seasons this century.

The Astros are the most controversial inclusion, as their run of success almost necessarily requires mentioning the cheating scandal that tainted their 2017 World Series run.

The Atlanta Braves have at least as strong a case for inclusion on this list. They’ve won six of the last seven National League East titles, won a ring in 2021, and own the fourth-best regular season winning percentage of any team this century.

The number-1 team on the list? The New England Patriots. Baseball dynasties are simply harder to come by these days.

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