we don’t believe in curses. nope. not us.
even if you aren’t a boston (or new york) fan, if you follow baseball, you’ve probably heard about the highly amusing hijinks at the still-under-construction yankee stadium. that is, that a construction worker and red sox fan buried a sox jersey in the cement of the visitor’s dugout, in hopes of cursing those damn yankees. frankly, hilarious.
the initial, offical response was: “so what, we don’t believe in curses”. sensible, since, despite its long and charming history in the sport, superstition is, well, superstitious. on sunday, however, they reverted to a “better safe than sorry” philosphy and dug the jersey up. thus making the prank even more hilarious.
now, though, it seems the yanks are taking this thing way too seriously, in that they are considering criminal charges against the guy who buried the jersey. beyond being petty and vindictive, this also implies they really do believe the whole curse thing. again, hilarious.
look, there aren’t any curses in baseball. the “curse of the bambino” was made up by dan shaughnessy. after all, why would babe ruth be so pissed at boston for trading him to new york (where he was actually paid what he thought he was worth and became damn famous and developed into the greatest ball player in history) that he’d curse the sox to never win the world series again until they did? eighty-six years is rather arbitrary, don’t you think? no, the actual curse of the bambino is this: bad trades and signings will fuck you over. the cubs “curse of the billy goat”? c’mon, it’s the cubs. hell, they hadn’t won the series for nearly 40 years by the time that curse came around. and the lesson from that is simply this: don’t let people bring farm animals to the ballpark in the first place. these “curses” are brought to us by the same people who can’t seem to counter sabermetric bloggers with anything beyond anti-intellectual rants and cliches about nerds, basements and never watching games. these are the same people who would rather have a scrappy, hustling david eckstein on their team, than a lazy, distracted manny ramirez. despite the fact that manny’s worst season in a decade (last year) was still better than most player’s career bests. the same folks who think being able to steal a base is more important than being able to get on base, despite the painfully obvious fact that you can’t steal second if you can’t get to first. and so on.
there are no curses. not if you don’t give them any credence. the yanks have just done so and it’s funny as hell. play ball!
May 10th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
great post, timm. And I agree about seeing the comedy in all of it.
Hard to dissuade people from the mystique of curses. You could add the curse of the Kennedy family to this, too. They weren’t cursed, just their vast wealth & privileged lives gave them a false sense of security. A good number of them became alcoholics, substance abusers, thrill seekers or had nonchalant attitudes towards danger. I’d put JFK Jr. in the latter category.
More baby pictures! Didn’t the Easter Bunny come to DC?
May 12th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
where do you think that giant lollipop came from? you’re as bad as my parents. [grin]