Christina Hammett

The Advocate

Ted Williams and Lou Gehrig. Carl Yastrzemski and Mickey Mantle. Some of the greatest stars to grace a baseball diamond are a part of the greatest curse ever created.

After 86 years of unexplainable happenings, the Boston Red Sox may have finally broken the curse of George Steinbrenner’s Evil Empire, the New York Yankees, a baseball empire that has won 26 World Series championships since 1923.

The Red Sox have not won a World Series since 1918, and the Curse of the Bambino began in 1919 when a young man by the name of George Herman Ruth broke Ned William’s single-season home run record of 27 (set in 1884) at the Polo Grounds against the New York Yankees. The Babe, a Red Sox pitcher who was later converted to the outfield so that his power-bat could be in the line-up everyday, was purchased by the Yankees the very next season for $125,000 and a $350,000 loan on the Fenway Park mortgage.

Consider that Alex Rodriguez, the Yankees’ third baseman and the highest paid baseball player in history, signed a 10-year, $250 million contract when he was still playing with the Texas Rangers last season. Babe Ruth, arguably the greatest player who ever played the game, was sold for a miniscule fraction of Rodriguez’s salary and when he was sold by the Sox the curse began.

Within three years of the purchase, Yankee Stadium was built, and Babe Ruth hit the very first home run there on April 18, 1923…against the Red Sox. That year, the Yankees won their first World Series in a 4-2 defeat of the New York Giants (the first all-New York series in history.)

In 1932, Boston played its first Sunday game at Fenway and were badly beaten… by the Yankees 13-2. The historical Red Sox beatings continue. In 1941, Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio edged Boston’s Splendid Splinter Ted Williams, who was the last modern-day player to hit over .400, 291-254 in the American League Most Valuable Player award voting because of his unprecedented 56-game hitting streak.

In 1947, DiMag, once again, edged Williams by a single point in the MVP balloting even though Williams won the Triple Crown. In ’61, Roger Maris homered off of Boston’s Tracy Stallard to break Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record.

The same year that Steinbrenner took over as general manager of the Yanks (1973), Sox catcher Carlton Fisk and Yankees catcher Thurman Munson got into a brawl at Fenway Park. Some of the greatest records and moments, including Bucky “Bleeping” Dent, have been between the Red Sox and the Yankees and an unbelievable amount of decisions favored the Yankees…until this season.

On Wednesday evening, the Red Sox catapulted themselves into major league history, and some say broke the Curse of the Bambino, when they came back from being three games down in a best-of-seven American League Championship Series (ALCS) against the Yanks.

When second-baseman Pokey Reese threw out the final Yankee runner in the ninth inning, a miracle had occurred: The Red Sox actually defeated the Yankees.

The curse couldn’t possibly last forever because it is a rarely known fact that the Yankees released Babe Ruth in 1935 because they thought that he was getting too old to continue playing the game. What is interesting about this is that he went back to Boston after this, not as Red Sox player but a Boston Brave.
To have treated the greatest player of all-time with that kind of disrespect and not expect a curse to reciprocate is risky. The Yankees had it coming to them and this is definitely Boston’s year. Boston will win the 2004 World Series and finally expel the curse. They have had to go through 86 years of disappointment and embarrassment in order to reach this moment and there is no one who deserves it more than they do.