Sports Curses
I read this article on Cracked and found it rather amusing: 6 Insane Sports Stories That Will Make You Believe In Curses.
Now, I know absolutely nothing about sports. I am, in fact, a sports retard. So, please, enlighten me on the superstitions and curses of sports. No matter how obvious and well known it might be to you, I can assure you, I don't know about it.
The Cubs curse is the most improbable. They have come so close so often and lost in so many odd ways that it is tempting to believe.
It is the most famous and the oldest still standing. They've had well built teams that imploded. I think only the now sadly defunct 86 year drought for the Red Sox rivaled it. The Red Sox seem to always find improbable ways to lose. But a huge part of their curse was not building there teams very well. The always emphasized offense over pitching, speed and defense. This tending to get them.
The Red Sox curse was simply based on insulting the "Baseball Gods" by trading/selling the best baseball player ever to the Yankees. Babe Ruth was the player traded away.
Eighty-six years? Holy molé, that's a long time!
And, unsurprisingly, there's even a Wikipedia article on that one:
The Curse of the Bambino was a superstition cited as a reason for the failure of the Boston Red Sox baseball team to win the World Series in the 86-year period from 1918 until 2004. While some fans took the curse seriously, most used the expression in a tongue-in-cheek manner.
The curse was said to have begun after the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth, sometimes called The Bambino, to the New York Yankees in the off-season of 1919-1920. The Red Sox had been one of the most successful professional baseball franchises, winning the first World Series in 1903 and amassing five World Series titles prior to selling Ruth. After the sale, the once-lackluster Yankees became one of the most successful franchises in North American professional sports.
Talk of the curse as an ongoing phenomenon ended in 2004, when the Red Sox came back from a 0-3 best-of-seven deficit to beat the Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series and then went on to sweep the St. Louis Cardinals to win the 2004 World Series.
The curse had been such a part of Boston culture that when a road sign on the city's much-used Storrow Drive was vandalized from "Reverse Curve" to "Reverse The Curse", officials left it in place until after the Red Sox won the 2004 Series.
I am not superstitious and I don't believe in curses. Except for the Cubs curse. Like Jim said, weird things seem to happen to them, and they implode just when you think they are on an unstoppable roll. That fucking goat.
Most amusing to me is the "Curse of the Colonel" which afflicts the Japanese baseball team Hanshin Tigers.
The last time the Tigers won the Japan series was 1985. The fans got a little rowdy in the ensuing celebration and threw a statue of Colonel Sanders into the Dōtonbori River, because it was the only thing within arms reach that held a resemblance to their American born MVP, Randy Bass.Originally posted by Wikipedia
Since then, they have yet to win a Japan series, though the Colonel statue was found earlier this year, so here's hoping!
I remember that John Safran episode. That was a great show. Never have I seen such nerd rage directed against religion.
Something tells me we haven't seen the last of foreshadowing.
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