Wait until next year.

Four days ago, you were ready to say the most painful four words in a Boston Red Sox fan’s lexicon … weren’t you?

You were ready to throw in the towel. You were ready to forget a solid 162-game regular season, and a three-game playoff sweep of Anaheim, and to accept the fact that those (insert colorful adjective here) Yankees had done it to your Red Sox … again.

Down three games to none in a best-of-seven series, the Red Sox were finished. You knew it. We all knew it.

No team had ever rallied from three down to win a Major League Baseball playoff series. No team had even rallied from three down to force a deciding seventh game.

So you said it. Just like last year … and the year before … and every single year you’ve rooted for the Sox. Wait until next year.

Shame on you. Shame on me. Shame on (nearly) all of us.

While a World Series victory is necessary in order to truly vanquish the demons that have haunted Sox fans since 1918, Wednesday night’s seventh-game victory over their most hated rival was a fine first step.

The Red Sox did it. Can you believe it?

To some, the win probably came as less of a surprise than to others. All across Eastern Maine, Red Sox fans were wearing their caps and shirts with pride on Wednesday.

At Brewer Middle School, eighth-grader Emily Fraser was among the few diehard Sox fans who refused to give up as Boston lost the first three games to the New York Yankees.

On Monday, she wore a Red Sox shirt to school. The Sox won. On Tuesday, she wore another. The Sox won again. By Wednesday, she’d worked her way through her family’s entire supply of jerseys, and had to find other ways to express her loyalty.

She did.

“My language arts teacher [told us] he thinks baseball is rigged, [and that the Red Sox comeback was choreographed],” Fraser said. “When he said that, I walked right out of class and did my work in the hall.”

Fraser’s teacher was poking fun. Fraser’s good-natured protest was well-received. But make no mistake: The Red Sox are not a joking matter to this 14-year-old.

Fraser can tell you all about pitcher Curt Schilling’s ailing ankle. She can tell you all about her favorite players. And though she wasn’t born until four years after a certain ground ball trickled through Bill Buckner’s legs, she can talk Sox history with the best of them.

“I’ve learned a lot about the curse. I’ve learned a lot about 1918,” she said, referring to the last year the Red Sox won the World Series.

“But I don’t think the curse keeps you from winning something. I think the Yankees have just had the luck to beat us in the past,” she said.

And hours before the first pitch was thrown, Fraser was confident her team would find a way to win.

“I don’t have a doubt,” she said. “I think they did three in a row, they can take four. I just think they have the heart to do it, they want to win it this year. I think they’re ready to prove everyone wrong who says ‘1918.’ I say, ‘2004.”‘

While only a World Series title will erase that curse, it’s hard to underestimate the power of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry.

Tim Brown, the assistant manager of Lids, a Bangor Mall store that specializes in baseball caps, says he has sold plenty of merchandise to supporters of both teams in the past week.

He says the sales rivalry runs about 50 percent Sox, 50 percent Yankees. The biggest seller this year: The pastel pink Sox caps targeted at young women.

For the record, Brown is a Sox fan … though, all you really have to do to figure that out is look at his head, and notice the well-worn cap he wears.

“I never gave up,” Brown said on Wednesday. “To tell you the truth, a lot of people I knew did. I never, never gave up. I was like, ‘They can do this.'”

Brown says that positive attitude isn’t one he has tried to adopt. It’s just second-nature.

“It’s just something that’s implanted in our heads at a young age,” he said.

Nearby, a pair of college students proved Brown’s sales estimates correct.

One – UMaine freshman Bri Tibbetts – tried on several Yankees caps.

Her roommate, Tracie Gillespie, watched from a distance, seemingly unwilling to step too close to Yankees paraphernalia for fear that she might catch some nasty, contagious disease.

The pair admitted that they’ve both had an interesting week as they rooted for their respective favorites.

Tibbetts likes the Yanks. And Gillespie … well, you get the point.

During games, they rib each other constantly. Gillespie has a pair of plastic clapping hands that she uses to celebrate when the Sox are playing well.

And Tibbetts?

“I have a foghorn,” she said.

On Tuesday night, after Derek Jeter apparently scored a run after Alex Rodriguez swept the ball out of pitcher Bronson Arroyo’s glove on a close play at first base, Tibbetts grabbed her foghorn, sprinted to the dorm room door, and began to celebrate.

“I had my horn and was running down the halls,” she said.

Her celebration was short-lived: The umpires ruled Rodriguez’s play illegal, and sent Jeter back to first, much to Gillespie’s delight.

“I [called down the hall and] told her that the call was wrong, that it was bogus,” Gillespie said.

At the UMaine dorm where the girls live, Red Sox fans dominate. Because of that, Tibbetts (a fledgling Yankees backer who chose to support them because she’s dating a Yankees fan) chose not to make any rash purchases on Wednesday.

“I’d get my butt kicked [if I wore a Yankees cap tonight],” she said. “I really would.”

While both Gillespie and Tibbetts are relatively new baseball fans, more veteran Sox-watchers have found themselves daring to dream … again.

And at times, despite their best intentions, they’ve also found themselves expecting the worst … again.

Len Cole owns The Sports Arena in Bangor. On Saturday night, the entertainment center was packed with fans watching the game. On Monday and Tuesday, the crowd had thinned as Boston’s hopes seemed dim. But on Wednesday, with a historic comeback possible, the throng was larger, and the fans more raucous.

Cole said the contested play at first base brought his heart into his throat, for an understandable reason.

Cole didn’t see Rodriguez reach out for the ball. All he saw was 1986, all over again.

A ball … rolling into right field … as an opposing player circles the bases.

“I basically saw the ball [roll] away and it just reminded me of Buckner,” he said. “I thought, ‘Here we go.'”

A few hours before game time on Wednesday, Cole was busy making final arrangements. He was hoping for the best. He dared mention a romp. But he knew better than to expect it.

“You watch,” he said. “It will come down to the last batter, two outs, a 3-2 count, and something’s gonna happen. We’re all sitting there with our sweaty palms, and something’s gonna happen.”

Wait until next year? Not this year. Not yet.