Curses, (soon to be) foiled again! Maybe

I have, on occasion, gone on in some detail about my inner voice, the one that tells me to either take certain actions, or to avoid taking them, all for my general edification. As I am nothing if not a reckless and heedless fellow, this voice usually has its what-hands?-full, just to keep me from committing rash acts that have every promise of sending me towards some sort of self-destructive act so awful it would surely be seen on the next local newscast, and then talked about by the viewers for some time to come.

But on other occasions, my inner voice alarm sounds off to warn me that if, say, I am to see something, usually an object I have all my life wanted to see, then perhaps I had better act on impulse, and go see it. One occasion-where I again ignored my inner voice-found me in Boston, and had I acted, I might have gone to see the U. S. S. Constitution, Old Ironsides, herself. This warship was so named because of an incident in the war of 1812, in a battle with the British ship, HMS Guerriere, when a cannon ball bounced off her sides.

It was proposed shortly afterwards that the ship be mothballed, but thanks to a famous ode penned by early American author, Oliver Wendell Holmes, entitled, aptly enough, “Old Ironsides”, which contained such memorable lines as “Aye, tear her tattered emblems down…”, and “the harpies of the shore shall pluck the eagle of the sea”, an effort was made to save the ship, and it now rests in Boston, and if I should ever get back to Bean Town, I could, I suppose, still see it.

But, sad to say, another famous site-Yankee Stadium- which I could have seen had I but made the effort, yet foolishly chose not to, will not be there if I should ever find myself that far north of the Mason-Dixon Line again. Yet, a few years ago, had I but taken a subway ride just a little farther north, I might have gotten to see the House that Ruth built before certain curse-worthy individuals were able to secure its destruction. In my own defense, I wasn’t aware of Yankee Stadium’s impending demise. And had I been, I might not have been inclined to believe that the team’s fans would stand still for such an outrage. But we have seen the results. No outcries came from the public, no soul-stirring odes, just polite resignation from the Yankee fans, and enough of an effort from an anemic home team, coupled with the foresight of someone to make the final opponent the Orioles, that kept the Yanks from losing the last game in a stadium that should have been as inviolable as, say, Wrigley Field.

Speaking of being curse-worthy, baseball seems to have a lot of the really good curses associated with sports. One of the best, and perhaps, the longer lasting curses involves the Chicago Cubbies, who reside in the aforementioned Wrigley’s Field. This particular curse involves a Greek immigrant named Billy Sianis and his pet billy goat, Murphy, who Sianis, according to the legend, had nursed back to health after Murphy fell off a truck while going by his inn, now referred to as The Billy Goat Tavern. The year, BTW, was 1945, and Chicago was up against the Detroit Tigers.

There is a lot of urban myth involved with this legend, but the bottom line is, Sianis attempted to attend game four of the Series, and due to a rain that day, and the fact that those who could make such decisions, decided that a wet goat would stink, ultimately reckoned to eject both Billy and billy, which sent Billy into such a state of mind that he cursed the team, declaring that Chicago would never win another pennant, or even get to play in another Series, and after the Cubbies lost to Detroit, 4 games to 3, supposedly sent a telegram asking the Wrigleys “Who stinks now?”

Closer to the home town of the Yankees, before their by-now-abandoned home field stadium was even built, we got the curse of the Bambino. This one, which was apparently in effect from 1918-the year the Sox sold the contract of arguably the best baseball player of all times, George Herman “Babe” Ruth, Jr.-through 2004, when the same Sox came back from a 3 game to 1 deficit against these same Yankees, to win the league championship 4-3, and then the Series against the St. Louis Cardinals 4 games to zip. It has been speculated that the Babe was finally mollified enough to allow this to happen. In fact, so powerful was the undoing of this curse, that the next year, the Chicago White Sox may have gotten some benefit from it, as their “Black Sox curse” was lifted, as well, and in 2005, they bought home the first Series championship to the Windy City since 1917, even if, in the minds of the Cubs faithful, it went to the wrong part of town.

Neither of these curses was, in my opinion, foreseeable. From the very beginning of professional baseball, contracts have been viewed as a commodity, and are bought and sold every day, almost always without the seller being placed under any curse. Neither does keeping a smelly old goat out of the ball park usually do any long lasting harm. But not in the strange cases of the Red Sox or the Cubbies. In other words, I suppose that you can never tell sometimes about these curses until literally decades later.

The point I would make to those bone-heads, the Steinbrenners, is that it was offending a still living Babe Ruth that got the Sox in that much trouble. And yet that curse took 86 years to run its course. But that little offense should be nothing compared to demolishing the legacy that the Babe left in the Big Apple. Unless I miss my guess, and only another century or so will tell, New York City may be in for a curse that will end all curses. Time shouldn’t run out before this potential new curse ends. Because, remember, baseball hath no fury like a Babe Ruth scorned.

BTW, I’d guess you can go ahead and wear the Babe’s old uniform around for work clothes, as George Costanza did during an episode of Seinfeld. It probably won’t get any worse, no matter what you do.