Sports-Related Curses

By: Lewis Grosso

First off, I really enjoyed this assignment because it allows the students to be able to share their knowledge on topics they are passionate about. For me, it was super simple to pick a topic because as a Yankees fan, I know one of the greatest sports curses of all time very well. Sports-related curses can be described as “myths” surrounding a certain team, city, or sport. I focused on 3 different sports curses that are known throughout the U.S. and have affected some of the most well-known franchises in the country. 

The first curse that I presented was the Curse of Bobby Layne, which many Detroit fans would say is still haunting them to this day. I felt it was timely to include this curse because Matthew Stafford played 11 seasons with Detroit and in his first season with the Rams, he wins a Super Bowl. While on the Lions, Stafford was referred to as one of the biggest wasted talents during his prime because he was in that franchise. The curse comes from the 1950s when the Lions’ QB Bobby Layne was traded and on his way out, he cursed the franchise and said they would never win again.

The second curse in my presentation was the Curse of the Bambino, which is probably the most well-known universally out of all the curses I presented because of the large market team that was affected, the Boston Red Sox. Babe Ruth used to play on the Red Sox up until 1919 when the Red Sox did not want to sign Ruth to a larger contract, so he was sold to the Yankees. After this move, the Curse of the Bambino took a team that won 5 of the first 15 world series ever and completely demolished their hopes and dreams. The Red Sox would not win a world series until 2004, and it seemed like they could just never beat the New York Yankees. The Yankees would dominate them and knock them out of the playoffs, and people really thought this curse was real because there weren’t many other explanations for how a team could have such little luck against their rival. In 2004, the Red Sox defeated the Yankees in the playoffs, and they swept the Cardinals in the World Series, ending the curse. The Sox have won 4 championships in the 21st century.

Lastly, I talked about the Curse of the Billy Goat and how the Chicago Cubs were plagued with this myth for decades. A tavern owner put a curse out on the Cubs saying they wouldn’t win a pennant of the championship again. It took until 2016 for the Cubs to win the title and some think that curse still hasn’t broken fully because while they may have won a title, the Cubs were supposed to continue to succeed with the team they had when in reality, they found no more success after the 2016 year and now find themselves once again, arguably the worst team in the major leagues at the moment.  

One quote that stuck with me during the lecture in class on 2/14 is from our textbook by Professor Drucker:

“It’s important to note that there are no heroes and villains in sports. Media and fans   create these constructs and place athletes in the heroic or villainous categories of   designations” (Drucker 1994, p. 83)

With that said, do you think these myths are real? Or are they a product of the fans’ imagination? Many sports fans describe sports as being their whole lives… do fans create storylines based on coincidences? Or were these teams actually cursed?