Anybody who pays attention to the national pastime is aware that when the Boston Red Sox won the first of their three recent World Series in 2004 (they also won in 2007 and 2013), they had not won a World Series since 1918 -- a period of 86 seasons.
As we all know, two of those Red Sox teams (2004 and 2007) had a general manager named Theo Epstein. He originally took over in 2002, as the youngest general manager in the history of the game at 28 years old.
Deservedly so, Epstein was given much of the credit for putting those two teams together. In fact, after briefly resigning after the 2005 season, he came back in early January 2006 when he received the added title of executive vice president of baseball operations.