CURSE OF 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. The curse was said to have begun after the Red Sox 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 as an ongoing phenomenon 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

History of the phrase

The lore

Cursed results

Attempts to break the curse

Curse Reversed

The Curse in popular culture

“You Can’t Blame Harry Frazee!”

Frazee's Trade Record

See also

Notes

External links

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 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.

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 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 in that Series.) 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.

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 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 Brecheen 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. However on September 10th, after the Yankees completed a 4-game sweep of Boston and the Yankees actually held the lead. On September 16, 1978 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. The Yankees actually had a chance to clinch the division on the season's last day; however, Boston defeated Toronto and New York lost to Cleveland, forcing a one-game playoff on October 2nd at Fenway Park. The memorable moment of the game came when Bucky Dent hit a home run in the 7th inning that barely went over the Green Monster which gave New York a 3-2 lead. Thurman Munson's sacrifice fly later in the inning, and the 8th inning solo home run by Reggie Jackson would give New York a 5-2 lead. After scoring 2 runs in the 8th to make the score 5-4, in the 9th inning, the Red Sox had the tying run on 2nd and the winning run on 1st with 1 out. However, Jim Rice flied out, advancing Rick Burleson to 3rd, and Carl Yastrzemski popped out to Graig Nettles, ending the game.

★ 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 were able to tie 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. (Both Buckner and Wilson would say later that, even if Buckner had fielded the ball cleanly, because of Buckner's mobility limitations he likely would not have beaten the speedy Wilson to the bag.) In the deciding seventh game, the Red Sox took an early 3-0 lead, only to ultimately lose 8-5. 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 Pedro Martinez rather than go to the bullpen. After a quick out, Jorge Posada's double (the 3rd of the inning) capped a three-run rally that tied the game at 5. The score would stay tied through the bottom of the 11th, when Aaron Boone, leading off the inning, hit Tim Wakefield's first pitch for a home run to give the Yankees a 6-5 win. Little's managerial error also cost him his job, as his contract was not renewed.

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 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 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.

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.

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 British novel ''Fever Pitch'', about a man'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.

★ 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.

★ 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. The loudmouth wears a Yankee baseball cap and taunts the patrons about how the Yankees have won 22 World Series (by that time) and the Red Sox, since 1918, have not won any. He gets his comeuppance at the end, when he switches to hockey, insulting the Boston Bruins without realizing that one Bruins player is present, listening to his tirade.

“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. After the 1920 season, Barrow quit as Red Sox manager and became the general manager of the Yankees, building the team by acquiring 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.

Frazee's Trade Record

Notwithstanding the above, a record of the trades made from 1918 to 1923. The source for this information is Macmillan's ''Baseball Encyclopedia,'' 1988 edition, "Trade Section," pp. 2251-2709.
Joe Bush—December 1921. Pitched in two pennant seasons for the Yankees. Traded for Rip Collins (pitcher), Roger Peckinpaugh, Bill Piercy, Jack Quinn.
Joe Dugan—July 1922. Played for five Yankee pennant teams. Traded for Chick Fewster, Elmer Miller, Johnny Mitchell, Lefty O'Doul.
Harvey Hendrick—January 1923. Never played for Red Sox; was in 1923 World Series with Yankees. Traded for Al DeVormer, who batted .254 after trade (Hendrick’s lifetime average was .308).
Waite Hoyt—December 1920. Traded (with Harry Harper, Wally Schang, and Mike McNally) for Del Pratt, Muddy Ruel, Hank Thormahlen, and Sammy Vick. Hoyt pitched for the Yankees in ten seasons, and was in seven World Series (including the 1931 Series, with the Philadelphia A’s).
Sad Sam Jones—December 1921. Traded with Joe Bush (q. v.). Pitched five seasons with Yankees.
Carl Mays—July 1919. Traded to Yankees for players Bob McGraw and Allan Russell. Became ''persona non grata'' after killing Ray Chapman with a beanball in a game in 1920, although absolved of criminal blame.
Herb Pennock—January 1923. Traded to Yankees for Camp Skinner, Norm McMillan, and George Murray. Pennock stayed with the Yankees until 1933, pitching in five Series.
George Pipgras—January 1923. Traded to the Yankees for Al DeVormer ''(supra).'' Pipgras never played for Boston; his eleven-year career included three Yankee pennant seasons.
Babe Ruth—the biggest sale Frazee made. He sold Ruth to the Yankees for $125,000 plus a $300,000 mortgage on Fenway Park.
Wally Schang—December 1920. Traded to the Yankees for Pratt, Ruel, Thormahlen, and Vick. Caught for three Yankee pennant teams.
Everett Scott—traded along with Joe Bush (q.v.). Scott set consecutive-game playing record it took Lou Gehrig to break.
Elmer Smith—July 1922. Traded to Yankees with Joe Dugan (q. v.). Was famous as first player (with Indians in 1920) to hit grand slam homer in World Series.
The above only includes the trades Frazee made to the Yankees from 1918 to 1923, when he was owner of the Red Sox. The ''Encyclopedia'' lists about 40 trades in all made by the Red Sox in those years, including to teams ''other than'' the Yankees.

See also

★ Sports-related curses

Notes

1. A 'Curse' born of hate Glenn Stout

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)