Baseball Curses

The Curse of the Bambino got exorcised last year, right? Good. That was getting old. Once the Yankees' fans started chanting "1918, 1918" at the Red Sox, you knew it was only a matter of time. Nonetheless, we heard all about the Curse of the Bambino last year. The year before, we heard all about the Curse of the Billy Goat, which supposedly haunts the Cubs. (Why can't some curse haunt the Marlins? 1993 expansion team with two World Series rings! It ain't right. Why are the Giants cursed? Must be because of Candlestick.) Is it now the Curse of Steve Bartman? Anyway, we've heard all about baseball curses the last two years, but, now, nothing.

This is kind of fascinating to me as the White Sox look like they have a really good shot at winning their first World Series since 1917. No one talks about them being cursed, yet they have the best reason of just about any team for being cursed. The White Sox of 1919 -- the Black Sox -- threw the World Series, after all. That seems like a way better reason to be cursed for all eternity than Harry Frazee selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees to get the money to finance a Broadway production starring his girlfriend, the supposed reason for the Curse of the Bambino. Way better than not letting some bartender's billy goat come to the 1945 World Series, the supposed cause of the Cubs' troubles.

If you think about it, the White Sox actually have been more cursed than the Red Sox or the Cubs. The Red Sox of course came close to winning a World Series several times between 1918 and 2004. They went to the World Series four times in that time (1946, 1967, 1975, 1986). Every time, they lost in seven games. Every time, they lost painfully, e.g., Johnny Pesky holding onto the ball as Enos Slaughter scored from first on a single with the winning run in 1947, Joe Morgan getting the winning RBI with a bloop single in the top of the 9th of Game 7 in 1975 after Carlton Fisk won Game 6 with his wave-it-fair home run, Bill Buckner in 1986. And that doesn't even count blowing a 14-game lead in 1978 and then losing a one-game playoff to the Yankees. At Fenway. After having a lead. On a home run by Bucky Dent. Or the 2003 ALCS. The Cubs have come awfully close to at least getting to the World Series. They were up 2-0, needing one win to go the World Series, in 1984 before they were done in by Steve Garvey and Leon Durham. They were five outs from the World Series in 2003 with a 3-run lead with their best pitcher on the mound before Bartman.

The White Sox, however, have almost totally stunk in an almost totally boring way for years. Yeah, they went to the World Series in 1959, but they lost and there seems to be not much that is memorable about that World Series (except that the Dodgers won!). They were in the playoffs a few times and didn't do anything memorable. Basically, they more or less stunk and were overshadowed by the Cubs for years.

So maybe the White Sox were really the most cursed team. And, this year, it seems like the gods have decided it is time for the curse to stop.

These curses seem to work themselves out in the most curiously appropriate ways. Take the Red Sox. Their curse supposedly derived from the fact that they sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees. So who did they have to beat to exorcise the curse? The Yankees. Their curse expressed itself in horrible, gut-wrenching disasters like being one strike away from winning in 1986 before the world fell apart and Buckner let the ball between his legs. So how did they exorcise the curse? They inflicted the most gut-wrenching choke in the history of professional sports on the Yankees, who were up 3-0 with a lead in the bottom of the 9th in Game 4 and lost. (Now maybe the Yankees have the Curse of the Metrosexual after A-Rod's wristy attempt to knock the ball out of Bronson Arroyo's glove in Game 6 of that series. A-Rod, man, that guy has a serious case of loser karma, kind of like Chris Webber.)

And how are the White Sox getting their curse -- the curse that came from cheating -- exorcised? By getting a string of ridiculously bad umpire calls. That call at the end of Game 2 of the ALCS, where the umpire said that the Angels' catcher didn't catch the ball? That one stunk about as bad as our dog. That call in Game 2 of the World Series where the umpire said that the ball hit Jermaine Dye and not his ball? That one stunk worse than our dog.

For whatever reason, the White Sox seem to be on karmic parole from the crime of 1919 and the fact that they are getting bends in the rules that their predecessors broke seems to prove it.

Of course, if the Astros come back and win, then they will have broken their curse -- the Curse of the Astroturf -- but I think that they still have some time to serve for being the first team to inflict that stuff on the world.