Monday Milestone: Classic Fall

“Back to Foulke. Red Sox fans have longed to hear it: The Boston Red Sox are World Champions”
– Joe Buck, calling the final moments of the 2004 World Series[1]

 There are few things more amusing in sport, than a good curse.

Waiting for Cronulla to win a premiership is like leaving the porch light on for Harold Holt according to Jack Gibson, and just ask any Magpie fan about the Collywobbles. But watching the World Series this week, it’s clear there is no sport that quite celebrates, nor suffers under superstition more than baseball.

 In 1918, the Boston Red Sox had just won their third World Series from the past four years. But needing to fund his girlfriend’s play, owner Harry Frazee did the unthinkable, in January 1920 selling king hitter Babe Ruth, “the Bambino” to the archenemy, the New York Yankees. Almost a century later, who has heard of Babe Ruth?  And who has heard of the production No, No, Nanette? Such began a curse that many loyal Sox fans for decades never saw broken.

Not that they didn’t get close. In many ways it wasn’t that Boston fell so often at the final hurdle, it was the way in which they did it.

 There was 1946, when Johnny Pesky’s controversially delayed throw allowed the Cardinals to break a deadlock in the eighth inning of Game 7, and 1967, when they were again defeated by the Cardinals, again in the seventh game. Whilst Carlton ‘Pudge’ Fisk gave the Sox hope in the classic 1975 Series, they were still denied in the ninth inning of Game 7. And of course in 1986 when the ball rolled between the legs of first baseman Bill Buckner as the Sox were within one out of the pennant. They would again somehow go on to lose in seven.

 So it was with an eternity of disappointment in their history, that in 2004, the Red Sox entered the post-season.

 That October it initially went to script, the Sox finding themselves down 3-0 in their American League Championship Series against the loathed Yankees. Before, it happened. First David Ortiz’s two run homer in the twelfth kept the season alive. Then three more consecutive wins against the Yankees not only completed the greatest comeback in post-season history, but put another nail in the Bambino coffin and sent the Red Sox through to the World Series.  

 Where, they would defeat rivals, the Cardinals at Fenway Park, and then travel to St Louis to ‘Reverse the Curse’. A home run to Rameriz, and a dominating display, gave the Sox Game 3. Then on the verge of history in Game 4 with a Johnny Damon home run, doubles to Ortiz, and Trot Nixon, and a 3-0 victory, just like that, an eighty-six year old curse was gone.

Curses will break. Streaks will end. They rarely last forever. On that October night in St Louis, one of the all time title droughts came to an end.  The Curse of the Bambino was lifted.

This Week in History:
2004, October 27 – The Boston Red Sox break the “Curse of the Bambino” and win their first World Series in 86 years.