Curse of the Bambino

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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 in the 86-year period from 1918 until 2004. While some fans took the Curse seriously, most used the expression in a tongue-in-cheek manner.

The curse was said to have begun after the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth, sometimes called The Bambino, to the New York Yankees in the off-season of 1919-1920. Before that year, the Boston Red Sox had been one of the most successful professional baseball franchises, winning the first World Series in 1903 and amassing five World Series titles. After the sale, the once-lackluster Yankees became one of the most successful franchises in North American professional sports.

Talk of the curse as an ongoing phenomenon ended in 2004, when the Red Sox came back from a 0-3 best-of-seven 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.

The curse had been 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.

[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, although it was not when the phrase originated.

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 appear to be 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. 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 Ruth had been sold 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.

[edit] The lore

Although the title drought dated 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.

Neither the lore, nor the debunking of it, entirely tell the story. As Leigh Montville discovered during research for his book, The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth (Random House, 2006, p.161-164), No, No, Nanette had originated as a non-musical stage play called My Lady Friends, which opened on Broadway in December of 1919. His research indicated that that play had, indeed, been financed as a direct result of the Ruth deal.

Various researchers, including Montville, have rediscovered the fact that Frazee had close ties to the Yankees owners, and that many of the player deals, as well as the mortgage deal for Fenway Park itself, had to do with financing his plays.

Prior to Ruth leaving Boston, the Red Sox had won five of the first fifteen World Series, with Ruth pitching for the 1916 and 1918 championship teams. (He was with the Sox in the Series in 1915 but the manager used him only once, as a pinch-hitter; he did not pitch.) The Yankees had not played 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.

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[edit] "Cursed" results

Even losses that occurred many years prior to the first mention of a curse in 1986 have been attributed to it. Some of these 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 throw, allowing Slaughter to score, but Pesky has always denied this charge. Film footage is inconclusive, except that it shows Pesky in bright sunlight and Slaughter in shadow. Red Sox Ted Williams, playing with an injury, was largely ineffective at bat in the Series.

• In 1948, the Red Sox finished the regular season tied for first place, only to lose the pennant to the Cleveland Indians in the major leagues' first ever one-game playoff.

• 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, who would go on to win a record five consecutive World Series during 1949-1953.

• In 1967, the Red Sox surprisingly reversed the awful results of the 1966 season by winning the American League pennant on the last weekend of the season. In the World Series, they faced off against the St. Louis Cardinals. In the seventh game, the Cardinals' best pitcher, Bob Gibson, beat Boston's ace, Jim Lonborg, 7-2, who was pitching on short rest and was ineffective.

• In 1972, the Red Sox lost the division title to the Detroit Tigers by a half-game. The season began with a 13-day strike that resulted in some teams playing up to nine fewer games that season. Additionally the Red Sox lost a game when it was rained out and the decision was made not to replay it. In the second-to-last game of the season, they lost to the Tigers, 3-1, after a potential run was lost when Luis Aparicio slipped rounding third.

• In 1975, the Red Sox won the pennant and met the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. The Red Sox 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 tied 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. winning 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. On September 16, the Yankees held a 3.5 game lead over the Red Sox but the Sox won 12 of their next 14 games to overcome that deficit and forced a one-game playoff on October 2 at Fenway Park. The memorable moment of the game came when Bucky Dent hit a home run in the 7th inning that hit the top of the left field wall Green Monster and skipped out of the park, which gave New York a 3-2 lead.

• In Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, Boston took a 5-3 lead in the top of the 10th and quickly retired the first two batters, putting them within one out of winning the World Series. However, the New York Mets 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 lose 8-5. The collapses in the last two games prompted Vecsey's articles.

• In 1988 and 1990, the Red Sox advanced to the American League Championship Series, only to suffer four-game sweeps both times at the hands of the Oakland Athletics. They were also swept by the Cleveland Indians in the 1995 and 1998 AL Division Series, and were defeated by the Yankees four games to one in the 1999 ALCS.

• In 2003, the Red Sox were playing the Yankees in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series. Boston held a 5-2 lead in the eighth inning, and manager Grady Little opted to stay with pitcher Pedro Martínez rather than go to the bullpen. Jorge Posada's double (the 3rd of the inning) capped a three-run rally that tied the game. In the bottom of the 11th, Aaron Boone hit a home run to give the Yankees a 6-5 win.

• In 2004, the 'curse' ended when the Red Sox came back from a 0-3 best-of-seven 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.

[edit] Attempts to break the curse

Red Sox fans attempted various methods over the years to exorcise their famous curse. These included placing a Boston cap atop Mt. Everest and burning a Yankees cap at its base camp; hiring professional exorcists and Father Guido Sarducci to "purify" Fenway Park; spray painting a "Reverse Curve" street sign on Storrow Drive to change 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 Ramírez flew into Section 9, Box 95, Row AA and struck a boy's face, knocking two of his teeth out.^[2] 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 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. 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] Curse Reversed

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.

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. Cardinals shortstop Edgar Rentería—who wore number 3, Babe Ruth's uniform number with the Yankees—hit into the final out of the game. 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] The Curse in popular culture

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• At Wrestlemania XIV, guest ring announcer Pete Rose taunted the Boston crowd about the curse.
• In an episode of Cheers, during the first season, a loudmouth patron taunts Sam (an ex-Red Sox player himself) about the Curse.
• 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'.
• After New York's defeat, the Curse was poked fun at during the "Weekend Update" segment of Saturday Night Live',. when the ghost of Babe Ruth explains that he left during Game Four with the ghosts of Mickey Mantle and Rodney Dangerfield to go drinking.
• 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."
• 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.
• The British memoir Fever Pitch, about author Nick Hornby's obsession with the Arsenal FC British soccer team, was adapted into an American film of the same name by the Farrelly brothers. The American adaptation was about an obsessive Red Sox fan, and 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 Red Sox were originally supposed to make the World Series and lose, but with the current events, the World Series victory was written in. The film's stars, Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore, were filmed running onto the field as the Red Sox celebrated their World Series win.
• 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. David Ortiz, Johnny Damon, Edgar Renteria, and Mike Timlin all have cameos.

[edit] See also

• Sports-related curses

[edit] Baseball Curses

• Curse of the Billy Goat
• Curse of the Black Sox
• Curse of Billy Penn
• Curse of Rocky Colavito
• Curse of the Colonel

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• ESPN account of Ruth's sale to the Yankees.
• A "Curse" Born of Hate, a skeptical history of the curse lore, written by Glenn Stout during the 2004 playoffs.
• Boston Globe article "Taking teeth out of curse?"
• Audio of 1978 Bucky Dent homer
• Cartoon regarding 2004 Yankee loss to the Red Sox
• Cartoon regarding 1978 Bucky Dent homer
• Talks about reversing the curse of the Bambino
• The Curse of the Bambino: an HBO documentary (2003)
• The Curse of the Bambino: A musical by Steven Bergman and David Kruh (2001)
• The Curse of the Bambino: A hilarious Flash Animation done just before they actually won as a Halloween gag (2004)