In case you haven’t heard, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series last night.
Damn, that feels weird to type.
Anyway, their last championship was in 1918 and their futility had become mythic - literally. People came to believe that the Red Sox were cursed, thanks to their sale of Babe Ruth (sometimes called the Bambino), maybe the greatest ballplayer of all time, to the Yankees in 1920. Hence, the Curse of the Bambino.
Both of the Chicago baseball teams are said to be cursed as well. The Cubs last won in 1908, and it’s been a staggering 59 years since they were even in the World Series World Series. They have supposedly been held back by the Curse of the Billy Goat, something so stupid I can’t even explain it. The White Sox last won the World Series in 1917 and have the most valid basis for a curse, imho - in 1919, they were heavily favored to win the championship, but gamblers paid eight players to throw the Series. The ensuing scandal caused those eight players to be banned permanently from baseball (the movies Eight Men Out and Field of Dreams are about the Black Sox scandal), and the White Sox haven’t won since.
Anyway, what I want to know is, does this phenomenon exist elsewhere? Do people talk about curses? Does even any team outside of the US have a run of futility like the Cubs?
All the hype and noise and pomp and endless press about the one time in history that they were great, continued in perpetuity by the members of that one team and a number of ESPN blowhards…accomplished absolutely jack since.
Endless running back squabble that never gets resolved (somehow, you just knew Ricky Williams would pull some insane crap like that). Needed an extra 30 minutes to replay an incomplete pass one year just to win the damn division. Always get slaughtered in the playoffs short of the Super Bowl. (Who was it that beat them in AFC Championship by about 50 points?) Dan Marino, the most terrifying, defense-raping, blow-the-game-open quarterback who ever lived leaves with nothing.
What makes this Curse of That One Shining Moment so cruel is that until Miami has a perfect or near-perfect season, we’re never going to stop hearing about the perfect season…which means that even if they win the Super Bowl, that probably won’t be enough to end the curse!
(Feel free to link back to this post and rub my face in it if they ever turn it around. I’m not holding my breath.)
On a local note, the University of Hawaii women’s volleyball team, which hasn’t won the championship since my sister was in elementary school. One season they were up 2-0 in the championship game and found a way to lose. I shouldn’t complain, though…most year’s, they’re good enough to at least make the semis or quarters. Not unlike the Dolphins.
Well, the Scotland football team has a habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of vicitory!
I’m not aware of any similar “curse” here in the UK, really. There are teams that never seem to win, but that is ususally down to the normal ins and outs of the game.
But I’m glad that I now know who this “Bambino” is - I was finding references to this really quite confusing.
British football (soccer) fans tend to think of their own team as cursed in my experience (that is, until a Billionaire comes in to buy them).
England’s national football team and Penalty Shoot-outs (or ‘kicks from the mark’, as one American I spoke to insisted on calling them) are a historically bad combination.
The Hanshin Tigers baseball team (based in Osaka) was said to be under the “Curse of the Colonel”. After they won the Japan Series in 1985, there was a huge drunken celebration in the streets of Osaka. One by one, people were picked out of the crowd who most closely resembled members of the team and encouraged to jump from one of the city bridges into the Dotonbori River (something the city government has since tried to discourage, considering that river has almost solidified from the pollution in it). Anyway, there was noone in the crowd available who resembled the Tiger’s token gaijin, Randy Bass, so one enterprising reveller grabbed the concrete statue of Colonel Sanders from in front of a nearby KFC, and pitched it into the inky depths. Since then, the Tigers remained in the cellar, and it was rumored that they’ll stay there (although they won the league championship in 2003) until the statue is recovered and returned. The river was dredged in an attempt to find it, but so far nothing has turned up.
This may not be what the OP has in mind, but no British tennis player has won the men’s singles title at Wimbledon since 1936 or so (Fred Perry was the last), and the rare British men who have a chance to make it to the finals always feel a lot of pressure. You can see poor Tim Henman sweating bullets at Wimbledon, under the weight of his countrymen’s hopes and expectation.
Either that was a very bizzarre simulpost, or I’m just crazy. I was going to say the Leafs, nothing since 1967, but checking out the word hail on Websters to see if it was the right spelling, I killed both windows at once. Stupid touch pad.
