Curse of the Bambino
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This Cryptonomicon page is about Baseball and the curse of the bambino
Stephensonia
Baseballs appear 17 times in this book ... In return, Shaftoe taught Goto Dengo how not to throw like a girl. A lot of the Nips are good at baseball and so it was hilarious, even to them, to see their burly friend pushing ineffectually at a baseball. But it was Shaftoe who taught Goto Dengo to stand sideways, to rotate his shoulders, and to follow through. He's paid a lot of attention to the big Nip's throwing form during the last year, and maybe that's why the image of Goto Dengo planting his feet on the ashlars of the Bund, winding up, throwing the streamer-wrapped grenade, and following through almost daintily on one combat-booted foot stays in Shaftoe's mind all the way to Manila and beyond.
Authored entries
- TBA
Wikipedia: Curse of the Bambino
Babe Ruth
Rookie Portrait 1915
Looks pretty smug
© Baseball Antiquities
The Curse of the Bambino was a tongue-in-cheek explanation for the failure of the Boston Red Sox baseball team to win the World Series for 86 years after they sold Babe Ruth, sometimes called The Bambino, to the New York Yankees. The flip side of the "curse" was New York's success—after the sale, the once-lackluster Yankees became one of the most successful franchises in North American professional sports.
The future of the phrase seems in doubt, since the Sox defeated the Yankees in dramatic fashion in the 2004 American League Championship Series and then won the 2004 World Series. However, it remains a legend of America's fascination with baseball and helps to frame the mythical rivalry between the Red Sox and the Yankees that reflects a similarly storied rivalry between the cities of Boston and New York that dates back to the colonial era, when Boston, once the largest city in North America, became supplanted by New York.
History of the phrase
The phrase "curse of the Bambino" had a long history when in 1990 Boston Globe writer Dan Shaughnessy used it as the title of his team history (ISBN 0140152628), a move that brought it to national attention and triggered widespread usage by the national media. The phrase was also used as the title of a musical play in 2001, directed by Spiro Veloudos.
As the title drought stretched on and on, national sports media often made reference to the curse when the Red Sox were doing notably well—or notably poorly. Many serious fans grew annoyed by the constant refrain of the "curse" and deplored it as media-created fluff that was good for book sales, television networks, and witty T-shirt slogans, but without basis in history.
The lore
Although the title drought dates back to 1918, the sale of Ruth to the Yankees was completed January 3, 1920. It is believed that Red Sox owner Harry Frazee used the proceeds from the sale to finance the production of a Broadway musical, No, No, Nanette (which did not see its first performance until five years later). The show introduced songs such as "I Want to Be Happy" and "Tea For Two." In 1921, Red Sox general manager Ed Barrow left to take over as GM of the Yankees.
Prior to Ruth leaving Boston, the Red Sox had won five World Series, with Ruth as pitcher in the 1915, 1916, and 1918 teams, whereas the Yankees hadn't been in the World Series. After the sale, the Yankees came to win 26 World Series by the start of the 2004 season, while the Red Sox had been to the Series only four times - and lost each time in seven games.
The Yankees' success rate since the sale of Ruth is stunning: They have won 17 more World Series than the second-most-successful teams, the Oakland Athletics and St. Louis Cardinals, who both won 9 championships. Ruth, by then more known for his batting than for his pitching, was a high profile part of the 1923, 1927, 1928 and 1932 titles. And even when not winning American League pennants and/or World Series championships, the Yankees have been a model of consistency, finishing in the first division for a record 39 consecutive years—from 1926 through 1964, all inclusive—and suffering only two last-place finishes since the sale (in 1966 and again in 1990).
References to the "curse" do not usually cite any specific event in which Ruth himself invoked retribution; they rather look back to his departure and the beginning of the title drought as a coincidence. Skeptics suggested that the curse was merely a poor excuse for the team's long-term underperformance.
The "curse" did not always wait for the Series, however. In 1949, the Red Sox needed to win just one of the last two games of the season to win the pennant, but lost both games to the Yankees. Ironically, the Red Sox were managed by Joe McCarthy, who had previously steered the Yankees to 7 World Series titles.
In 1978, the Red Sox had a 14-game lead over the Yankees on July 18, but by season's end, the teams were tied. A one-game playoff took place at Fenway Park on October 2. In the 7th inning, Boston led 2-0, but Bucky Dent, a .240 hitter (although he had been hitting only .140 for the previous 20 games) with only 4 home runs all season, hit the ball over the Green Monster with two runners on base to secure the Yankee win.
The most dramatic defeat for the Red Sox, the one which seemed to have "confirmed" that there truly was a "curse", came in 1986, when Boston squandered three leads in what would have been the deciding sixth game before losing in the 10th inning to the New York Mets after a fielding error by first baseman Bill Buckner. The Red Sox then lost the 7th game of the series, blowing a 3-run lead. This marked the earliest, explicit in-print mention of the "curse," in a New York Times article by sports writer George Vecsy.
In 2003, a similar scenario to the 1978 series occurred. Tied with the Yankees at three games apiece in the American League Championship Series, Boston had a 5-2 lead going into the 8th inning. Two Yankee doubles and a single later, the game was tied. The game - and series - was decided in the 11th by a first-pitch lead-off home run by light-hitting Aaron Boone.
The Economic Excuse
Some have explained the curse as an effect of economics. Specifically, the market size (and stadium size) of any given team defines its ability to sell tickets, which in turn determines its budget, including player payrolls. Teams in larger stadiums and markets are more able to afford better, more expensive talent in its players. The Yankees, with Yankee stadium (75,000 seating capacity), and the massive market of New York City, Long Island, and New Jersey, have been able to compile their impressive World Series record, it is said, specifically because it has historically had the greatest payroll potential.
For this reason, some have noticed that the payroll difference between the Yankees and the Red Sox is about equal to the difference the team and players pay in taxes to the city of Boston and the state of Massachusetts, and what they would pay if they moved to the neighboring state of New Hampshire, which has the second lowest state and local tax burden in the United States. Such a move would thus have eliminated the economic advantage and put the Sox on an even playing field with the Yankees.
The fact that Major League Baseball management had, in recent years, arranged for revenue sharing measures between teams to help prevent teams from having to move from their historic roots for more lucrative markets, and to balance out the advantage that major market teams have historically displayed over smaller market teams, may have been a contributing factor to the Red Sox victory in 2004.
This premise is born out by the fact that team payroll jumped by $27 million between 2003 and 2004. While still $57 million behind the payroll of the Yankees, this jump in payroll producing performance improvement is similar to the $37 million jump in the payroll of the Seattle Mariners in the 1995 season in which they made the American League playoffs for the first time in history, and were only defeated for a spot in the World Series that year by defeat at the hands of the Yankees in the final playoff round. Furthermore, the 2004 Red Sox payroll was the second largest in the Major Leagues, while in 2003 the Red Sox only ranked number 6. Prior to this, with the exception of the 2001 and 2002 seasons, the Red Sox payroll was never higher than 5th and often as low as 15th compared to other teams.
Below is the payroll history of the Boston Red Sox:
| Year | Median salary | Total Payroll |
| 2005 | $ 2,875,000 | $123,505,125 |
| 2004 | $ 3,087,500 | $ 127,298,500 |
| 2003 | $ 2,000,000 | $ 99,946,500 |
| 2002 | $ 2,287,500 | $ 108,366,060 |
| 2001 | $ 1,962,500 | $ 109,675,833 |
| 2000 | $ 2,000,000 | $ 81,210,333 |
| 1999 | $ 1,500,000 | $ 71,720,000 |
| 1998 | $ 1,000,000 | $ 51,647,000 |
The curse "reversed"
In 2004, the Red Sox met the Yankees in the American League Championship Series. After losing the first three, including a 19–8 drubbing at Fenway Park, the Red Sox trailed 4-3 in the bottom of the 9th inning of Game 4, three outs from being swept. But the team tied the game with an RBI single off feared Yankee closer Mariano Rivera and won on a 2-run home run in the 12th inning by David Ortiz. The Sox then won the next three games, becoming 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 World Series and 1967 World Series, and won the series in a four-game sweep.
The final game took place during a total lunar eclipse—the only post-season or World Series game to do so. The final out of the game was made on Cardinals shortstop Edgar Rentería—who wore Babe Ruth's old uniform number, 3 (which wasn't assigned to him until he joined the Yankees, who introduced uniform numbers).
Coincidentally, both times that the Red Sox won the World Series, Hockey's Stanley Cup playoffs were cancelled. The 1918-19 Stanley Cup playoffs were cancelled due to a flu epidemic that affected both teams, and the 2004-05 Stanley Cup playoffs were cancelled with the entire 2004-05 season, resulting from a labor dispute between the NHL owners and the NHLPA.
The Red Sox will open the 2005 season on April 4 at Yankee Stadium. The home opener will take place on April 11, also against the Yankees.
Wikipedia: Baseball
Baseball is a team sport, in which a fist-sized ball is thrown by a player called a pitcher and hit with a bat. Scoring involves running and touching markers on the ground called bases. The ball itself is called a baseball. Baseball is sometimes called hardball to differentiate it from the closely related sport of softball and other similar games.
Baseball is popular in the Americas and East Asia. In Japan, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama, South Korea, Taiwan and some other countries, it is the most popular sport by any measurement. In the United States, baseball has often been called the national pastime; the total attendance for Major League games is more than that of all other American professional team sports combined although this is also due to the lengthy 162 regular game schedule. Although the three most popular team sports in North America are ball games (baseball, basketball and American football), baseball's popularity grew so great that the word "ballgame" in the United States almost always refers to a game of baseball, and "ballpark" to a baseball field. Among American television viewers, however, it has been surpassed in popularity by American football and car racing. [Complete in link]
In July of 2005, the International Olympic Committee announced it would be dropping baseball, along with softball, as an olympic sport. One reason given is that American professional baseball players do not participate, though this is an interesting reversal from decades of Olympic policy which militated against participation of professional athletes in Olympic events.