Team Curse

Curse of the Bambino

The Curse of the Bambino was a superstition cited 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. While some fans took the curse seriously, most used the expression in a tongue-in-cheek manner.

The curse was said to have begun after the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth, sometimes called The Bambino, to the New York Yankees in the off-season of 1919-1920. The Red Sox had been one of the most successful professional baseball franchises, winning the first World Series in 1903 and amassing five World Series titles prior to selling Ruth. After the sale, the once-lackluster Yankees became one of the most successful franchises in North American professional sports.

Talk of the curse as an ongoing phenomenon ended in 2004, when the Red Sox came back from a 0-3 best-of-seven 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.

The curse had been 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 in a 4-0 sweep.

The lore

Although it had long been noted that the selling of Ruth had been the beginning of a down period in the Red Sox' fortunes, explicit mentions of the curse are rare before the mid-1980s. 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. 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 "an 86-year old curse" to break.

Curse Reversed

In 2004, the Red Sox once again 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. It also took place exactly 18 years to the day the Red Sox last lost a World Series game. Three years later, the Red Sox would sweep the Colorado Rockies to win another World Series.