For Barnicle brothers Nick and Colin, Oct. 27 looms particularly large this year.

That’s the 20th anniversary of one of sports’ greatest sagas, which they documented for Netflix as “The Comeback: 2004 Boston Red Sox” telling how “The Curse of the Bambino” was lifted after 86 years in Boston’s decades-long rivalry with the New York Yankees.

This anniversary is perfect timing, Colin said in a joint Zoom interview with Nick, to celebrate overcoming a curse that began when the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth’s contract to the Yankees, a terrible loss as Ruth remains the game’s greatest.

Lifting that “curse” and reviewing how it was done is, “More important now, even more so than when they did it,” Colin said. “This is a watershed moment in their lives, a bigger story than just playing a baseball game. For all Bostonians it was like unrequited love for so long, and to finally get back that love in 2004? It was a big deal. And 20 years on, they’ve got some perspective on it.”

“It’s just far enough back,” Nick noted, “that people will tell you the truth and remember some of it.”

Why did the Red Sox fail in the play-offs with so many seventh game failures against the Yankees?

“I was at that Red Sox/Yankees pennant Game 7, 2003, in New York. And the loss was devastating,” Colin said. “A lot has to do with pressure built on the Red Sox.

“The Yankees always expect to win, the Red Sox were ‘hoping’ to win. That hope turned into this immense pressure on the team, facilitated by the media and the fans.

“When you go into a Game 7, you could be up three runs, and a Red Sox pitcher walks one guy – and everybody in Boston? We go, ‘Oh NO! Here we go.’ That’s the kind of pressure on the players. They absolutely feel the turn in the ballpark that they’re in.

“Also,” he continued, “there was the idea that the organization, prior to the (new) ownership, they weren’t doing enough to make the on-field product good enough to go up against the Yankees.”

George Steinbrenner, Colin said, “didn’t care about the bottom line. The Yankees owner would get the best player for the best price. He didn’t bother about his bottom line.

“It really took the new ownership deciding to go toe to toe with the Yankees financially,” before the 2004 victory could happen.

“They made the decision as soon as they came in — to go toe to toe with the Yankees. That changed the way that the Red Sox had been operating for the better part of eight decades beforehand.”

The 3-part “The Comeback: 2004 Boston Red Sox” streams on Netflix Oct. 23. 

Red Sox batter David Ortiz points towards the sky as he crosses home plate after hitting a solo home run against the New York Yankees in the eighth inning of Game 5 of the American League Championship Series at Fenway Park Boston Massachusetts Oct. 18, 2004. (Photo by Jason Szenes/EPA/Shutterstock)