According to recent polls, 14 percent of all people across 20 countries believe that the world will come to an end during their lifetimes. Some of them are convinced that it will happen soon. There are even those cultists who claim to know the exact date the apocalypse will take place.

There is a name for those people -- Red Sox fans. Not every fan, mind you, is a member of this exremist cult, but the number of true believers is significant.

The date they're predicting the world will end is March 26, 2020, known to most as Opening Day of the baseball season. That's the day when they say everything will come crashing down upon us. Mookie will be playing for the Dodgers in Los Angeles, Alex Cora will be sitting at home in Puerto Rico, and the ghost of Bucky Dent will reappear to hit another lazy fly ball into the now nonexistent net at Fenway.

All is lost, they insist, before the season even starts. There hasn't been such pessimism around these parts since, well, since before the start of the 2013 season. You remember 2013? The doomsday crowd was out in full force back then, too. The Red Sox had finished dead last in the American League East the season before. They were in a constant state of war against their own manager, Bobby Valentine. And this was on the heels of the epic September collapse of 2011, when word leaked out that pitchers were ordering out to Popeyes for fried chicken and drinking beer in the clubhouse while games were still in progress. Armageddon was upon us.

This was the Red Sox response to all the adversity; they went out and signed bunch of no-name journeymen, none of whom looked like the answer to their troubles. The doomsday predicters were advocating that this inscription should be etched over the gates of Fenway Park: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

Then the Red Sox went out and won the World Series in 2013. So much for the doomsday-is-upon-us crowd.

Just who were these no-name journeymen who weren't supposed to make a difference, but who saved us from the ultimate calamity? The first guy the Sox signed was a back-up catcher with a career batting average of .229 and who, in 13 seasons had hit 10 or more home runs only three times. That really fired up the fan base, I'll tell ya -- but David Ross, now the manager of the Cubs, brought with him a veteran presence and leadership qualities that cannot be underestimated.

The next one signed was outfielder Jonny Gomes, he of the .242 lifetime average, who turned out to be the perfect teammate and, in fact, the spiritual leader of the team. This was followed by the acquisition of Mike Napoli a catcher/first baseman with a gimpy back so questionable that it took several months of medical exams before the signing was made official. He would be installed at first base, where he provided solid defense and consistent power at the plate. Right fielder Shane Victorino, the "Flyin' Hawaiian," was next up. He'd had some excellent years with the Phillies, but his best days seemed to be behind him. 2013, though, would be perhaps his best season, as he hit .294 and won a Gold Glove award. The final piece was a little known, oft-injured reliever named Koji Uehara -- who? Uehara was inserted as the closer only because two pitchers, Andrew Bailey and Joel Hanrahan, who ranked ahead of him, went down with season-ending injuries. But Uehara, who had the contagious enthusiasm of a politician on speed, turned out to be the best closer in baseball that year, as he set a record with a WHIP of just 0.57.

Of course the Red Sox already had some pretty good players on their roster -- guys like Dustin Pedroia, who was still at the top of his game, and Jacoby Ellsbury, who had an elite year with the Sox before decamping for the Yankees where he had a bunch of so-so years for elite money. 2013 was also the year that David Ortiz went from being a very popular, highly productive slugger into a legendary player for the ages. The pitching staff was anchored by Jon Lester, and even John Lackey had a comeback season.

The Marathon Bombings in April brought the city and the team together in ways that could never have been predicted and the phrase, Boston Strong, became the teams rallying cry. Needless to say, the world did not come to an end in 2013 -- and the Red Sox have a World Series trophy to prove it.

Red Sox doomsday prognosticators are hardly the first group to predict that the end of the world is just around the corner. Almost two hundrd years ago the followers of Rev. William Miller, who built a national following called the Millerites, by predicting that Oct. 22, 1844, would be the Day of Reckoning, built a church on Howard Street in the Scollay Square section of Boston that is now the site of Government Center. When the big day came and went and the world kept spinning round, the church fell into disuse and was later converted into a theater. At first, it held Shakespearian plays and grand operas. But it gradually lowered its cultural sights and eventually morphed into The Old Howard, one of the most famous burlesque houses in America. But it still had a stained-glass window above the marquee, a relic from its days as a house of worship. The Old Howard went out of business back in 1953, but it had outlasted the Millerites by more than a century.

The world did not come to an end on Oct. 22, 1844, and neither will it come to an end on March 26, 2020.

At least, I hope it won't.

- Dick Flavin is a New York Times bestselling author; the Boston Red Sox "Poet Laureate" and The Pilot's recently minted Sports' columnist.