By Marc Thaler
Sports Editor

Almost a year ago, the Patriots’ Halloween experience included plenty of trick, but very little treat.

Traveling to Pittsburgh, the Steelers brought New England’s 21-game winning streak to a grinding halt. The Super Bowl champions were thoroughly smoked, 34-20, in a one-sided affair that made the final deficit of two touchdowns seem like a close contest.

Still, that was just one loss. Bill Belichick & Co. rebounded nicely and made room in the Gillette Stadium trophy case for a third piece of hardware named after the legendary Vince Lombardi.

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Yes, everything turned out fine for the men from Foxboro, Mass. But Halloween could prove far more frightening for the Pats’ baseball brothers this year.

The Red Sox are on the verge of a monumental loss, one that truly makes the Pats’ demoralizing defeat in October ’04 very easy to ignore.

On Oct. 31, the current contract of Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein expires. Young Einstein, the architect of Boston’s first World Series championship in eons, will become a free agent if unsigned by the deadline date.

By all accounts, contract talks between Epstein and principal owner John Henry, Larry Lucchino and Tom Werner haven’t produced much in the way of positive news.

Considering the current Red Sox administration is extremely public-relations conscious, the fallout for failing to re-sign Boston’s boy wonder has the potential to be scarier than any ghoul or goblin.

Naturally, coin is the root of this dispute.

The following is what I fail to realize: Why is Boston’s front-office brass balking at Epstein’s demand to earn the big bucks?

That’s relatively speaking, of course. Epstein isn’t seeking Manny Ramirez money. He’s looking for a deal commensurate with his tremendous accomplishments as a big-league GM in just three years on the job.

To date, Epstein has delivered on his two biggest promises, outlined when he accepted the offer to fill the vacancy left by interim GM Mike Port.

First, he assembled the Hub’s only title-winning team in three generations – perhaps four, in some families. On a list of the 10 best reasons to give this guy a larger slice of the pie, that point alone occupies Nos. 1 through 9.

Second, since the Trio appears to need additional reasons, Epstein was successful in rebuilding Boston’s farm system. Future stars like Jonathan Papelbon, Craig Hansen, Manny Delcarmen, Jon Lester, Hanley Ramirez and Dustin Pedroia are already household names in this region, thanks to work done on Epstein’s watch.

Apparently, the Trio is unaware the New York Yankees’ dominance in the late ’90s resulted from energy expended nurturing the organization’s homegrown talent.

Big-market teams can spend absurd amounts of money, but that’s not what produces winning seasons, year after year. Instead, it’s the ability to scout and develop high-level prospects for future promotion to the parent club, or trade for Major League-ready athletes.

As if those two reasons aren’t enough, maybe the Trio should consider that Epstein has found success in a city which, prior to last fall, was never satisfied.

Few locations across the land have the amount of sports-media scrutiny that exists in Boston. Aside from the field manager’s job, Epstein’s role with the Red Sox is the one position countless Average Joes believe they can do better.

And maybe that’s exactly what plagues the powers-that-be. Maybe the three-man firm of Henry, Lucchino & Werner believe Epstein is a product of the system, rather than the system’s key component.

Whether or not that’s true is irrelevant at this point. Once again, management has dropped the ball in its attempt to strike a deal with an integral member of Boston’s operation.

It’s one thing to let athletes test the free-agent market. It’s quite another to take an identical approach with the mastermind responsible for bringing many of those athletes to Boston.