OLEAN -- Careful readers of this column already know I'm an unreconstructed Boston Red Sox fan, so they may forgive the gloating, celebratory, monkey-off-my-back tones in the following paragraphs.
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It is true the much-mentioned and venerable Curse of the Bambino that has stymied the Boston baseball team for 86 rotten years now hypothetically extends to the World Series, in which the Red Sox and equally powerful St. Louis Cardinals are competing as this is published. But for me, the feeling this nagging, dreadful affliction has finally been lifted just won't go away.
Boston's dramatic comeback triumph last week over the hated New York Yankees to win the American League pennant -- a Herculean effort which captured the imagination of even non-sports fans across the nation -- has assuaged decades of personal internal lament and neurotic autumnal behavior on my part.
There were omens that augured well. Two weekends ago in New York City, attending a university function, I was near Central Park in one of those terrific and crowded "Seinfeld"-like breakfast diners when I found myself swept up in one of those only-in-Manhattan scenarios.
As I munched my delicious spinach-and-feta omelette, I followed my usual rude habit of reading while I eat. I smiled over accounts in the New York Daily News of David Ortiz's walk-off home run against the Anaheim Angels that propelled the Red Sox into the playoff finals against the Yanks. The manager, who was also waiting on tables, noticed my glee.
"You are Red Sox fan?" he asked loudly in a Greek accent. "You look like good guy. You like Red Sox?"
I admitted, somewhat sheepishly I suppose, that I was a Boston loyalist.
"Get out!" he shouted, waving toward the door and startling other diners. He sounded serious and I was ready to refuse when he noticed the Daily News reproduction of a Boston Herald front page that sported a huge and confusing headline: "Go Yanks!"
In smaller type, the Boston tabloid paper explained it wanted the Yankees to win their initial playoff round against Minnesota "so we can kick your butts in the ALCS (American League Championship Series)." This amused the restaurant manager. He held up the paper to show other diners.
"Kick our butts?" he repeated loudly. "As if this happen. Ha-ha-ha! I let you stay."
Hmnnnn. A good-humored and forgiving Yankee fan. What's going on with that?
One of my students had a related encounter closer to Times Square. From a rural Southern Tier town, he was sauntering down the sidewalk wearing a Red Sox hat and sweatshirt when an NYPD squad car pulled alongside and -- just like on a TV detective show -- the cop car bullhorn blared: "Remove your apparel! Halt and remove the offending apparel immediately! It is illegal to wear this clothing in New York City in the fall!"
The student was flummoxed until he looked inside the cop car and saw two of New York's Finest laughing and guffawing. The smiling police officers waved my young friend on his way.
Maybe the warm glow is attributable to the way the Red Sox did it. They dug themselves out of an impossible hole never before escaped in the history of baseball. They were down 0-3 in the pennant playoff and pulled off a series of hugely improbable rallies to win four straight. That's never happened before. They beat the hated Yankees in a deciding playoff game. That hasn't happened before either, and as Bill Simmons -- a Bosox fan and great sports journalist for "ESPN The Magazine" -- wrote: "It's a possible sign of the apocalypse."
Of course, my students have figured this out, and some have taken to wearing Red Sox shirts and hats on the days of important tests. I chastise them, and warn them it will get them nowhere -- that it's worth only a third of a grade-point at most.
One of them threw me with an intelligent and unanticipated question the day of the seventh game:
Which would be worse for me, the Red Sox losing to the hated Yankees that night, or winning the American League pennant, only to lose in the seventh game of the World Series to Houston (which was still in contention at that point in the National League playoffs) and their former ace pitcher Roger Clemens?
I answered from the gut and without hesitation: losing to the Yankees. Again, Boston native Simmons explained it in his article as well as I can. You can win the World Series, theoretically, any old year -- he wrote -- but "you only have one chance to destroy the Yanks."
Simmons recounted how a friend -- a Detroit Tigers fan -- wrote him, "Everyone outside of Yankee brats are celebrating quietly with you guys. It's like you killed Michael Myers, Jason, Freddie Kreuger and Hannibal Lecter in one night."
The ESPN writer also pointed out another important aspect of the Yankee deterioration in Games Four through Seven: "It was the choke of chokes, an unprecedented gag job. For once, finally, the Yankees have some baggage."
Another student asked my favorite moment in Game Seven. I surprised myself with my spontaneous answer: "Watching all those little kids in Yankee jackets crying and weeping on TV in the final inning when they knew it was over."
Now that doesn't sound too good, does it? In one short sentence I destroy the self-image of a charitable, tolerant old guy who seeks to see all sides of things. It prompted a little self-analysis, after which I realized I had subconsciously welcomed the old misery-loves-company theme. I wanted -- the gods of baseball forgive me -- those little Yankee hatchlings to suffer the same anguish and psychological warping I had been subjected to in six decades of sports fan hell. It'll be good for 'em. They'll learn that life is no bowl of cherries, that there are no guarantees, that defeat is always looming no matter how hard you hope for another outcome.
It strikes me I have done something here I tell my students not to do -- I have left unexplained a previous insider reference: the Curse of the Bambino.
Way back in 1918, Boston was the dominant team in baseball, and that year they won their fifth World Series, largely on the talent of a young fellow named Babe Ruth, sometimes called The Bambino.
The Yankees still had not won a World Series at that time. In 1920, the Red Sox owner, Harry Frazee, whose devotion to the sport was already under suspicion by fans -- and reportedly to finance an actress girlfriend's play -- sold Babe Ruth's contract to the cagey owner of the New York Yankees, Jacob Ruppert. The price was amazingly cheap by today's standards -- $100,000. Ruth was insulted and reportedly groused about it. But he went on to become the greatest athlete of his time, riveting a nation and setting all sorts of hitting records.
After acquiring Babe Ruth, the Yankees established unquestionable dominance in their sport, went on to win 26 World Series, and are probably the greatest success story in the history of team athletic pursuit.
I can still hear my father -- a stone Yankees rooter -- advising me and my two brothers: "When the chips are down, the Yankees win." And they did. But not this month.
In the meantime, the Boston Red Sox have appeared in only four World Series since 1918 -- a measly, pitiable record considering they have boasted, at considerable expense, some of the greatest athletes of the last century on their teams.
The Red Sox have lost each of those World Series in Game Seven, usually due to a string of bonehead mistakes or unbelievable bad luck or incredible last-minute heroics by the opponents.
At once the worst and best thing about being a fan of the Red Sox: Their miserable and inexplicable performances when all is on the line have become a national synonym for choking.
They have become Everyman's team -- Red Sox Nation -- because they mirror a classic literary theme and much of our lives: a goal so nearly attained, were it not for intrusion of the fates.
Because it is easier than contemplating abject failure as a cause, this sorry record is now universally attributed by baseball fans -- Red Sox and Yankees alike -- and myself, to the ignominious and selfish actions of Ruppert, which triggered the Curse of the Bambino. It is an understandable, even probable, cause and effect.
It is an enticing belief. It weaves together most of the venerable cadences of history and religious narrative -- all the venerable themes -- morality, ambition, pride, revenge, achievement, deceit, lust, greed, hope, despair.
Various solutions have been offered. One of the most amusing -- seriously considered, I am told -- was the suggestion of Spaceman Bill Lee, an effective and free-thinking Red Sox reliever a few years back, who thought digging up Babe Ruth's remains and reburying them under the pitcher's mound in Boston's home, Fenway Park, might lift the curse.
There is no evidence that has occurred in recent weeks, but the feeling of relief remains for Red Sox fans.
The Red Sox performance against the Yankees was provably the greatest comeback in the history of the sport. Now, as Simmons mentioned, we have an answer for all those Yankee fan "petty barbs, the condescending remarks, the general sense of superiority from a fan base that derives a disproportionate amount of self-esteem from the success of their baseball team."
It was, Simmons accurately wrote, "like pressing the restart button on a video game."
What if the Red Sox lose to the mighty Cardinals in the World Series? Doesn't matter, we have finally beaten the Yankees when it counted, and now they know what 365 days of dismay and sadness feels like. Let them deal with it for a change.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Oct. 26 2004 |