Letter From America: Lifting The Curse
Ronnie Bray says that those who struggle under the injustice of having their hopes dashed by a naysayer should draw inspiration from the winners of this year's World Series, the Boston Red Sox. The Bosox, as they are called in newspaper headlines, finally overcame a so-called curse, placed upon them in 1918. "Think of the Red Sox,'' says Ronnie, "and fight for your life!''
Its true significance was noteworthy only to those few hundred thousand fans that really cared whether the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox won the American Baseball's League World Series. Outside America, no one really gave a hoot. That is the penalty for playing a game that is neither rounders nor cricket.
On the night of 27 October 2004, Babe Ruth finally gave up. Eighty-six years of failure and futility, the product of the so-called "Curse of the Bambino," was decisively concluded. The ‘curse’ is said to have been affixed to the Red Sox by Babe "Bambino" Ruth for selling him to the Yankees in 1918.
Theo Epstein, manager of the Sox, said of the victory, "This is for anyone who ever played for the Red Sox, anyone who ever rooted for the Red Sox, anyone who ever saw a game at Fenway Park."
Red Sox fans would not leave the stadium after the resounding victory of a team from which everyone had come to expect constant failure in the Series. "Thank you, Red Sox," they chanted for hours until they were hoarse, tired, and just about empty of praise for their team and the lifting of the curse than none of them had been there to see initiated.
The removal of the Curse of the Bambino was scarcely announced to the world at large. But for those with Red Sox blood coursing through their veins, it was a gateway from shadow to sunshine, from despair to hope, and their heads were a little higher, their smiles a little broader, and their hearts a little lighter as they walked out into the sunshine of a new day.
The most remarkable thing about this whole history of the Curse from beginning to end, is that some actually came to believe that it was a real curse, operating at a supernatural level, and that there was nothing anyone could do about it except suffer it. If ever something qualified to be the self-fulfilling prophecy of the century, this was it.
It is not probable that we will ever know what influence the Babe’s ‘Curse’ had on the fortunes of his old team, or on the outlook of those who have faithfully followed them down the years.
Yet it is more than likely that the fiction has not been without force. Even if only because, as fragile humankind, we are too often wont to take someone else’s word about our abilities and our potential for solid achievement.
What surprises me is that while the US national press and news channels carried the story with a certain amount of delectation, I did not read or hear of anyone drawing the obvious lesson from the affair.
I would have expected choruses of voices to be raised in proclamation that if you think you are beat, then you are beat, but if you think that you can achieve something, curse or no curse, then you will probably reach your goal.
Time will not permit the whole sorry history of declared low expectations to be recounted, but the battlefields are littered with the bodies of the slain who knew they could not win. Flop houses and prisons are filled with failures that knew they could not succeed, because battalions of parents and teachers had drummed the expectation of failure into their minds from a tender age.
To those whose future has been determined by any similar curse, that while it is not substantive, has all the corporeality of a brick dropped on to your head from a great height, I say "Take courage."
To those who struggle under the injustice of having their hopes dashed by a naysayer I exclaim, "Think of the Red Sox, and fight for your life!"
Copyright © 2004 – Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
