Too much email on the Bambino to deal with in a timely fashion. From a reader:
Mr. Goldberg,
In your Corner post today headed “The Curse of the Bambino” you wrote: “This is a myth Bostonians tell their kids because it sounds more chilling than: ‘Frazee sold 15 players over the course of a couple of seasons in order to make money. One of them was Babe Ruth.’” Bostonians do not tell their kids about the Curse of the Bambino. Boston fans are some of the most knowledeable baseball fans in the game. It is a relatively new myth created by Boston Globe Columnist Dan Shaughnessy in order to sell books. He liked the idea because it created a thread he could use to connect several different moments in Red Sox history. The problem is, it didn’t help with the good moments, so he just left those out. For some reason the national media, as well as some casual fans in Boston, have latched onto this myth. If you ask any serious fan of the Boston Red Sox about why they haven’t won a World Series since 1918, he’ll tell you about mismanagment, poor coaching decisions and a slew of other baseball related mistakes. What he won’t mention is a Curse. And if you do, he’ll nod, smile and stop talking, because he’ll know that you have no serious interest in baseball or in the team he loves.
Jesse Abelman
PS Bill Simmons of ESPN has a very good article on the history of the curse myth, and why he hates it at this URL: