Curse of the Bambino

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Babe Ruth -- "The Bambino"
Babe Ruth -- "The Bambino"

The Curse of the Bambino was a superstition cited, often jokingly, as a reason for the failure of the Boston Red Sox baseball team to win the World Series after they sold Babe Ruth, sometimes called The Bambino, to the New York Yankees. The flip side of the curse was New York's success—after the sale, the once-lackluster Yankees became one of the most successful franchises in North American professional sports. While some fans took the Curse seriously, most used the expression in a tongue-in-cheek manner.

Talk of the curse effectively ended in 2004, when the Red Sox came back from an 0-3 deficit to beat the Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series and then went on to sweep the St. Louis Cardinals to win the 2004 World Series.

It was such a part of Boston culture that when a road sign on the city's much-used Storrow Drive was vandalized from "Reverse Curve" to "Reverse The Curse", officials left it in place until after the Red Sox won the Series.

Contents

[edit] History of the phrase

The phrase itself first gained wide currency in 1990, when Boston Globe writer Dan Shaughnessy used it as the title of his team history (ISBN 0-14-015262-8). The book brought it to national attention and triggered widespread usage by the national media.

After the Red Sox collapsed against the New York Mets in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, New York Times sportswriter George Vecsey wrote an article connecting the errors that cost the Sox the game, the team's history of disappointments, and the sale of Babe Ruth. After the Sox also lost Game 7, and thus the series, Vecsey wrote another article expanding on the theme, headlined "Babe Ruth's Curse Strikes Again". These articles were the first explicit mentions in print of a Babe Ruth curse.[1]

Vecsey might have picked up the idea of the curse from other columns that had appeared in the leadup to the Series. Before that year's AL playoffs, an article by UPI sports writer Frederick Waterman said in its lead that when the Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees "he carried away with him the good luck and winning touch of the Red Sox." The rumor that Frazee had sold Ruth to finance a Broadway musical was also being discussed at the time, including in an article by Times writer Fox Butterfield a week before the Red Sox collapse.

After 1986, as the title drought stretched on, national sports media often made reference to the curse when the Red Sox were doing notably well—or notably poorly.[citation needed]

[edit] The lore

Although the title drought dates back to 1918, the sale of Ruth to the Yankees was completed January 3, 1920. In standard curse lore, Red Sox owner and theatrical producer Harry Frazee used the proceeds from the sale to finance the production of a Broadway musical, usually specified as No, No, Nanette. In fact, Frazee backed many productions before and after Ruth's sale, and No, No, Nanette did not see its first performance until five years after the Ruth sale and two years after Frazee sold the Red Sox. In 1921, Red Sox manager Ed Barrow left to take over as GM of the Yankees. Other Red Sox players were later sold or traded to the Yankees as well.

Prior to Ruth leaving Boston, the Red Sox had won five of the first fifteen World Series, with Ruth pitching for the 1915, 1916, and 1918 championship teams. The Yankees did not play in any World Series up to that time. In the ensuing 84 years after the sale, the Yankees played in 39 World Series, winning 26 of them, twice as many as any other team in Major League Baseball. Meanwhile, over the same time span, the Red Sox played in only four World Series – and lost each in seven games.

[edit] Cursed results

While many losing results, particularly after 1986, have been attributed to the Curse, some of the most infamous instances are listed below:

  • In 1946, the Red Sox appeared in their first World Series since the sale of Babe Ruth. They were favored to beat the St. Louis Cardinals. The series went to a seventh game at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. In the bottom of the eighth inning, with the score tied at 3-3, the Cardinals had Enos Slaughter on first base and Harry Walker at the plate. On a hit and run, Walker hit a double to very short left center. Slaughter ran through the third base coach's stop sign and beat Boston shortstop Johnny Pesky's relay throw to home plate. Some say Pesky hesitated on the relay throw, allowing Slaughter to score, but Pesky has always denied this charge, and film footage is inconclusive. In the top of the ninth, the Red Sox put the tying run on third and the go-ahead on first with one out, but Harry Breechen shut down the next two hitters to preserve the victory.
  • In 1949, the Red Sox needed to win just one of the last two games of the season to win the pennant, but lost both games to the Yankees. The Red Sox were managed by Joe McCarthy, who had previously steered the Yankees to seven World Series titles.
  • In 1967, the Red Sox reversed the awful results of the 1966 season and surprised many people by winning the American League pennant, in one of the tightest races in history, on the last weekend of the season. In the World Series, they faced off against the St. Louis Cardinals, who had defeated them in the 1946 Fall Classic. The two teams fought to a seventh game that pitted the Cardinals' best pitcher, Bob Gibson, against Boston's ace, Jim Lonborg. However, Gibson started the game on three days' rest, while Lonborg was starting on only two. The Cardinals defeated the Red Sox 7-2, with Gibson helping out his own cause by hitting a home run off his counterpart, Lonborg.
  • In 1975, the Red Sox won the pennant and met the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. The Red Sox had miraculously won Game 6 on a famous walk-off home run by catcher Carlton Fisk, setting the stage for the deciding Game 7. Boston took a quick 3-0 lead, but the Reds slowly fought back to tie the game. In the top of the ninth, the Reds brought in the go-ahead run on a Joe Morgan single that scored Ken Griffey, Sr. Boston was not able to answer, and the Reds won what is regarded as one of the greatest World Series ever played.
  • In 1978, the Red Sox held a 14-game lead in the American League East over the Yankees on July 18, but by season's end, the Yankees had clawed back, and the teams were tied. A one-game playoff took place at Fenway Park on October 2. In the seventh inning, Boston led 2-0, but Yankees shortstop Bucky Dent, a .240 hitter with only four home runs all season, hit a pop-fly home run over the Green Monster with two runners on base to secure the New York win.
  • In 1986 came the most dramatic defeat. In Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, Boston took a 5-3 lead in the top of the 10th and twice came within one strike of winning the title. But the New York Mets tied the game, then won it in the bottom of the 10th when Boston first baseman Bill Buckner committed a fielding error on a ground ball hit by the Mets' Mookie Wilson, scoring Ray Knight from second base. In the deciding seventh game, the Red Sox took an early 3-0 lead, only to blow it en route to an 8-5 loss to the Mets. The collapses in the last two games prompted Vecsey's articles.
  • In 2003, the Red Sox were tied with the Yankees at three games apiece in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series. Boston held a 5-2 lead going into the eighth inning, but manager Grady Little opted to stay with a tiring Pedro Martinez rather than go to the bullpen. Two Yankee doubles and a single later, the game was tied. In the bottom of the 11th, light-hitting Aaron Boone, leading off for the Yankees, connected on the first pitch from Boston's Tim Wakefield and drove a walk-off home run into the left-field stands to hand New York the pennant. Little's managerial error also cost him his job, as his contract was not renewed.

[edit] Attempts to break the curse

The "Reverse the Curse" Storrow Drive road sign
The "Reverse the Curse" Storrow Drive road sign

Red Sox fans have attempted various methods over the years to exorcise their famous curse. These have included placing a Boston cap atop Mt. Everest and burning a Yankees cap at base camp, hiring professional exorcists to "purify" Fenway Park, spraypainting a street sign on a Storrow Drive offramp that said "Reverse Curve" and editing it to say "Reverse the Curse" (the sign wasn't replaced until just after the 2004 World Series win), and finding a piano owned by Ruth that he had supposedly pushed into a pond near his Sudbury, Massachusetts farm: Home Plate Farm. Some declared the curse broken when, on August 31, 2004 a foul ball hit by Manny Ramirez flew into Section 9, Box 95, Row AA and struck a boy's face, knocking two of his teeth out. The boy (16-year-old Lee Gavin, a Boston fan whose favorite player was and remains Ramirez) lives on the Sudbury farm owned by Ruth. That same day, the Yankees suffered their worst loss in team history, a 22-0 clobbering at home against the Cleveland Indians. Some fans also cite a comedy curse-breaking ceremony performed by country musician Jimmy Buffett and his warm-up team (one dressed as Ruth and one dressed as a witch doctor) at a Fenway concert in September 2004. Another ceremony also occurred at the Zeitgeist Gallery, then located in Inman Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Just after being traded to the Red Sox, Curt Schilling appeared in an advertisement for the Ford F-150 pickup truck hitchhiking with a sign indicating he was going to Boston. When picked up, he said that he had a curse to break.

[edit] The curse reversed

A 2004 Boston Red Sox World Series Ring. Ring courtesy of Red Sox Vice-Chairman Les Otten
A 2004 Boston Red Sox World Series Ring. Ring courtesy of Red Sox Vice-Chairman Les Otten

In 2004, the Red Sox met the Yankees in the American League Championship Series. After losing the first three games, including a 19–8 drubbing at Fenway in Game 3, the Red Sox trailed 4-3 in the bottom of the 9th inning of Game 4. But the team tied the game with a walk by Kevin Millar and a stolen base by pinch-runner Dave Roberts, followed by an RBI single off Yankee closer Mariano Rivera by third baseman Bill Mueller, and won on a 2-run home run in the 12th inning by David Ortiz. The Red Sox would go on to win the next three games to become the first Major League Baseball team to win a seven-game postseason series after being down 3 games to none. Boston's Game 7 win in New York triggered a near-riot on the streets of Boston surrounding Fenway Park. In the near chaos, Victoria Snelgrove, a 22 year-old college student celebrating the win was killed by a pellet from a pepper-spray gun fired by police officers attempting to control the crowd.[2]

The Red Sox then faced the St. Louis Cardinals, the team to whom they lost the 1946 and 1967 World Series, and won in a four-game sweep. The final out of the game was made on Cardinals shortstop Edgar Rentería—who wore 3, Babe Ruth's uniform number with the Yankees. The final game took place on October 27 during a total lunar eclipse—the only post-season or World Series game to do so.

[edit] Portrayals of the Curse in popular culture

  • After New York's defeat, the Curse was poked fun at during the "Weekend Update" segment of Saturday Night Live. In the sketch, the ghost of Babe Ruth (played by Horatio Sanz) appears and explains to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler that he left during Game Four with the ghosts of Mickey Mantle and Rodney Dangerfield to go drinking. Babe says that he drank a few beers, along with gasoline and horse tranquilizers, causing him to pass out for the next four days. A week later, after the Red Sox 2004 victory, there was another Weekend Update skit about Red Sox fan and castmember Seth Meyers, who hazed both Tina Fey and Amy Poehler due to their superstitions. After an exchange of quarrels between them, he ended up hanging around with Johnny Damon and the rest of the Red Sox players.
  • The movie Fever Pitch, featuring an obsessive Red Sox fan, contains many references to the curse. The film was made during the 2004 World Series, which necessitated the filmmakers' reworking of the film's story. The film's stars Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore were filmed running onto the field as the Red Sox celebrated their World Series win.
  • In the movie 50 First Dates, Adam Sandler reminds his girlfriend about what happened in 2003 including a screencap showing the Red Sox winning the World Series, until the next clip shows the title 'just kidding'.
  • The Ben Harper song "Get It Like you Like It" includes the lines "But Johnny Damon swung his bat. Grand Slam. That was that. An 86 year curse is gone."
  • An episode of the children's TV series Arthur titled "The Curse of the Grebes" has Elwood City's baseball team losing its first two of three chances to win the world championship due to events based directly on Bucky Dent's homer and Bill Buckner's error. The episode states that the team hadn't won a championship since 1918 and that their opponent had won 25 since then. Johnny Damon, Edgar Renteria, and Mike Timlin all have cameos, playing members of the Grebes resembling themselves.
  • In comedian Stephen Lynch's song "Beelz", he ("Satan") sings "I’m in every Zeppelin album / I’m in all Rush Limbaugh’s rants / I’m the reason that the Boston Red Sox even had a chance"
  • On the television show Lost, Jack and his father often use the phrase "That's why the Sox will never win the damn series" to describe fate. In season 3, Ben shows the end of the game to convince Jack that the Others have contact with the outside world.

[edit] “You Can’t Blame Harry Frazee!”

In 2005, ESPN Classic aired an episode in a series called The Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame... giving reasons why the sale of Ruth was reasonable:

  • 5. World War I. With rosters depleted because of the war, Ruth saw action as both a pitcher and outfielder. After the players returned, Ruth became bigger than the team because he no longer wanted to pitch and his home runs were the talk of baseball.
  • 4. Ban Johnson. The president of the American League since its founding in 1901 effectively limited Frazee to the Yankees and White Sox for deals, by pressuring the other five teams (the Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, Philadelphia Athletics, St. Louis Browns, and Washington Senators) not to make any trades with Frazee.
  • 3. Babe Ruth's antics. Ruth often spent evenings out in bars, drunk only hours before games. He also jumped the team several times, the final straw being in the final game of the 1919 season.
  • 2. Ed Barrow. Frazee's right-hand man, Barrow served as general manager and field manager and knew how much of a troublemaker Ruth was. When Frazee wanted to send Ruth to the Yankees, Barrow, for reasons unknown, said the Yankees did not have any players he wanted. In a bizarre twist of fate, a month after the Ruth sale, Barrow re-emerged as the general manager of the Yankees and built the team by acquiring as many as seven players from the Red Sox (four of whom had won the World Series in Boston in 1918).
  • 1. Babe Ruth's holdout. Ruth forced Frazee's hand by holding out after the 1919 season, demanding $20,000 per year — twice as much as he had been making during the season.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Stout, Glenn. "A 'Curse' born of hate", ESPN.com, October 3, 2004. Retrieved on 2007-02-07.
  2. ^ INVESTIGATIVE FINDINGS IN THE OCT. 21, 2004 FATAL POLICE SHOOTING OF VICTORIA SNELGROVE (HTML). Suffolk County, Massachusetts District Attorney's Office (2005-12-09). Retrieved on 2006-09-29.

[edit] External links

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