Spoiler! 2004 Red Sox tale worth retelling, even with the ending known

After months of buildup, the docuseries Red Sox fans have been waiting for is ready for viewing with a simple add to your queue on Netflix.

“The Comeback: 2004 Red Sox” will not disappoint.

Director/executive producer Colin Barnicle and his crew, through in-depth interviews with almost every key participant, build the drama throughout the three-part series, produced by Meadlowlark Media in conjunction with MLB. Each segment runs roughly an hour.

• Red Sox history

The arc of the film starts well before Dave Roberts stole second base against Yankees closer Mariano Rivera in the moment that changed everything in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the 2004 American League Championship Series.

While there is the requisite footage of tortuous moments throughout the team’s history, the purchasing of the club by John Henry’s group in 2002 served as a sea change for a franchise that hadn’t won a World Series since 1918.

It is the in-depth interviews and revelations that come from them that makes this series a must-watch for the diehards and the casual fans.

For instance, Henry popped a bobble of champagne when he thought he hired Billy Beane to be his next general manager in November 2002.

Also, after Beane turned down the job in a phone call with Henry, he recalls telling Boston’s principal owner, “Hire Theo -- he’s the smartest guy in the room.” In hindsight, the Red Sox were smart to take Beane’s advice.

Other similarly fresh nuggets set the film apart from previous works on the ’04 Sox.

Barnicle recently took some time with MLB.com to talk about some of the intricacies of the production process.

MLB.com: What was it like to get the chance to direct a documentary that was so personal to you, given that you worked as a clubhouse attendant with the 2004 Red Sox and your family -- including your father Mike, a well-known journalist -- got you into the team at a young age?

Colin Barnicle: It shaded what we wanted to do with the docuseries. I was at Game 7 in 2003. I was there with my little brother and my dad. So I always felt like growing up with that kind of sort of fatalism of being a Red Sox fan at that time needed to permeate the entire series right up into the point where they come back from 3-0 down. There's really a before and after for the Red Sox. It's the eight decades beforehand, how the team was running, and afterwards, and the kind of seismic change. We wanted to capture the fatalistic feeling of being a Red Sox fan and how internally the organization was able to kind of overcome the immense self-doubt from the fan base.

MLB.com: The first episode is focused almost entirely on 2003. How important was it to give ’03 its just due for planting the seed for what happened the next year?

CB: I honestly thought the ‘03 season was almost more important than coming back from three games to nothing in terms of the narrative of the series. It's a heartbreaking moment with kind of an iconic Red Sox, Tim Wakefield, at the end there. The core of that team in 2003 was really the core of the team in 2004, and I felt like you had to see them overexert themselves, go to their max and still lose to doubt the fact that they could do it again in 2004.

MLB.com: I thought getting Grady Little on camera for Episode 1 was huge. He hadn’t been heard from in years. He ends up having some of the best one-liners of the film. Were you surprised he agreed to participate, given the villainous role he has worn for 21 years for not taking Pedro Martinez out when he was tiring in Game 7 of ’03?

CB: I was maybe a little bit surprised he wanted to talk, but, again, it’s 20 years later. When analytics really started to come into the game after that season and “Moneyball” came out in July of 2003, he was really one of the last kind of old-guard managers, and those are really out of the game now. And he felt a responsibility to talk about the way it was. The way it was for so many years and how it is now. I think he felt like the core of that team, he brought them up. Kevin Millar is Kevin Millar. David Ortiz is David Ortiz. And it’s because of foundation that Grady was able to build. And I feel like he wanted his voice in there, because so much of the 2004 season is [Terry Francona] and the front office and focus on the players. But, again, it started in 2003, and Grady was their manager.

MLB.com: How about Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens? Both aces are very candid on their brushback pitches as the rivalry got really heated again in ’03?

CB: The game has changed so much in the last 20 years, not just analytics, but it was almost the last moments of players policing themselves on the field.

MLB.com: “Four Days In October” came out on ESPN back in 2010. While that was one episode rather than a series, how did you make sure you didn’t duplicate that too much and make sure you had your own unique spin on that ’04 comeback?

CB: I think “Four Days in October” is great. I think I probably watched it when it first came out. But we didn't watch it [again] until we were all sent to Netflix. And I thought, one, that this is the end, coming back from 3-0. But it’s the tip of the iceberg. You need to see how this team got there in order to understand how it could come back from 3-down. I also thought we should follow the team experience. It’s not so much the fan experience in this one. It’s following the characters on the team through this journey, and they'll lead you through.

MLB.com: For all the talk there has been throughout the years about the shots of Jack Daniel’s the Red Sox players took prior to Game 6 of the ALCS, and then as a superstition, for the rest of the games that postseason, there was a temptation to think it could have been urban legend. But in the film, you actually see the big bottle of Jack Daniel’s that Millar grabbed from the visiting clubhouse attendant. You see many players taking the shots from the Gatorade cups. Where did you that that footage from?

CB: That’s the great Kevin Millar. Kevin had it [from a personal camcorder]. He was actually moving at the time. So he was like, ‘I don't know where it is.’ He's moving houses. He had boxes everywhere, but he finally found it, and we went through it and we checked everything with him. But as David Ortiz told us in his interview, “It was 20 years ago. Now I can talk about it.” I think that the amount of time that has gone by has allowed some of these players to talk more freely and openly about it.

MLB.com: One of the cinematic parts of the film I really liked was when the Red Sox won Game 7 at Yankee Stadium. You go back to the guys in present day and ask them what their reaction was at the last pitch of that game. You flash from Pokey Reese fielding the ball and throwing it to Doug Mientkiewicz for the final out to collage of 20-year reflection smiles from Millar to Theo to Ortiz to Pedro. What was your thinking there?

CB: That was something in the editing process that we found. We wanted to put a button on it, and it really came across one of our editors, Seth, who was like, “What do you think of this?” And I was like, “That's great.” It's kind of that basic ethos in editing, when somebody sees somebody smile on the screen, they also smile. Think about that moment. What are you thinking? I was like, no words, just think about it. And seeing the reactions on their face for that, I was like, OK, this is a good sort of ending to their journey.