This is the year Boston, the one you’ve been waiting for since 1918, the year you win it all.

I’m not saying that to make friends in Boston, enemies in New York or fodder for chat rooms. The prediction business isn’t an exact science, as my recent record indicates. All anyone can do is go with what makes sense. After all, they opened the playoffs with a 3-0 sweep of Anaheim in the division series. This year the Red Sox just make sense.

So do the Cardinals in the National League, the team that Boston is going to beat in a World Series.

I know what you’re thinking, Red Sox Nation: What about the curse?

Sensible people know there’s no such thing as a curse on a baseball team.

But we’re talking about Red Sox fans, who have been described in many ways, but never as sensible.

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If they had the common sense God gave asphalt, they’d find something else in which to invest their emotional energy every summer. But they keep cheering for their Sox, even though they know that their team is cursed.

You can’t convince them otherwise. When Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to that team in the Bronx, the Curse of the Bambino descended on Fenway and found life there so pleasant it never left.

So I’m not going to bother trying to argue Boston fans out of their precious curse. If you believe something imaginary is real — and that goes for everything from curses to Santa Claus to weapons of mass destruction — it is real, and the fact you can’t see it or touch it is a piddling detail, hardly worth mentioning.

Instead, I am here for the first time announcing that there is a counter curse at work upon the Yankees this year, and it’s more powerful than the Curse of the Bambino.

It’s the Curse of Zim.

Here’s the deal. Don Zimmer, who once managed the Red Sox and last year took a swing at Pedro Martinez and walks around with a plate in his head and was once compared to a gerbil, was a critical part of nine straight Yankee playoff appearances and four World Championships. He was Joe Torre’s confidant, bench coach, and right-hand man.

And last year, he quit the Yankees in disgust, chased out by the ogre of the Bronx, George M. Steinbrenner III. It was like Darth Vader abandoning Yoda. You can’t do it without something bad eventually happening to you.

The Curse of Zim is going to do in the Yankees. And its power will continue to work for the enemies of the pinstripes even after they are eliminated from the playoffs. It will ensure that the worst possible fate befalls the Yankees, and what could be worse than sitting at home watching the Red Sox celebrate their first World Series victory in 86 years?

The only disappointment I can see for the Red Sox this postseason is that they aren’t going to get to beat the Yankees to get to the final seven games of the year. New York may have won more games than anyone in the American League, but they’re not going to get past Minnesota in the division series.

That’s not that bold a prediction. The Twins have Johan Santana, who will be the difference in the five-game series.

I’ve been saying since before the season started that the Yankees didn’t have the pitching to win it all. It’s the only thing left that I have a chance to be right about, and I’m not going to change my mind now.

That lack of pitching will send the Twins to Boston, where Curt Schilling and a Pedro Martinez who doesn’t have to face his daddy will be enough to overcome Santana and Radke, just as they will beat the Angels in the division series.

In the National League, the Astros, with Roger Clemens pitching Games 1 and, if necessary, 5, will send the Braves to their customary early exit.

Meanwhile, the Cards, with the best lineup in the league, if not the game, will easily dispose of the Dodgers. Believe me on that, L.A. fans. We saw what Jeff Weaver could do under pressure in New York, and it was enough to make Yankee fans forget Ed Whitson and think that Esteban Loaiza is Cy Young by comparison.

But Houston’s magic carpet ride will end in St. Louis. The Cards were the class of the NL Central all year. They won’t stumble against a team they beat by six furlongs in the regular season.

And then it will be time for the Red Sox to finally lay their miserable history to rest. They’ll win because of Schilling and Pedro.

And the Curse of Zim.

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