text: Red Sox enter playoffs with seasoned performers The last two Saturdays of July changed the 2004 Boston baseball season. Before the final two weekends of the seventh month, the Red Sox were alarmingly average. The Olde Towne Team, swollen with the second-highest payroll (\$130 million) in the majors, was finishing a third consecutive month of .500 baseball and a season of great expectations looked like it might ...