The Curse Remembered

The Curse Remembered

[paypal_donation_button]The Curse Remembered

It’s over. It’s done with. The witch is dead. Why even talk about it? Why even remember it? Those eighty-six cursed years have no power anymore. 2004 was an exorcism to end all exorcisms.

Yes, we could forget about it. Instead, we do everything but forget. We still talk about it because it’s the greatest curse to ever be broken, and because you can’t pretend it never happened. Entire generations of Boston Red Sox fans were born, lived, and died without seeing a World Series champion. We talk about it because of the miracles it took to keep the curse alive, the miracles that almost ended it, the ones that broke hearts, and the ones that finally mended them.

We talk about the past because it informs the present, and because by remembering the pain of losing can we best appreciate the joy of winning. We remember the past, and talk about it, because it honors those Red Sox greats who never got the chance to taste ultimate victory. We remembered those who struggled to end the drought, and we remember the teams that almost did.

The Red Sox did not fail for lack of talent, precisely. They had bad years, but they weren’t the Chicago Cubs (no offense intended). They weren’t the Washington Generals. They were winners who just couldn’t quite *win*, and lest we kid ourselves, it was never quite as rough as the Cubs have had it. It’s easy to say that now that it’s over, but eighty-six years isn’t one-hundred-plus. As rallying cries go, though, that isn’t one of the best. Since the Cubs last won a World Series in 1910, a few things have happened. The best way to sum it up that I know, is to simply say that when the Cubs won their last World Series, four European countries had Emperors still calling the shots. When the Cubs last got it done, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, Emperor Charles I of Austria-Hungary, and Sultan Mehmed V of the Ottoman Empire still held their thrones. Two of those countries don’t even exist anymore. (Sort of, but this isn’t an article on geopolitics, so let’s leave it that).

The list of greats that came through Fenway Park would make everyone but maybe the New York Yankees blush: Carlton Fisk, Wade Boggs, Jimmie Foxx, Ted Williams, Nomar Garciaparra, Dwight Evans, Jim Rice, Fred Lynn, Pedro Martinez, and on, and on. Now that we’re more than a decade removed from that fever dream of futility, the fact that none of these men won a World Series in Boston seems more impossible rather than less.

If Ted Williams wasn’t the best hitter not named Babe Ruth, and if Pedro in ’98 through ‘00 wasn’t the best pitcher since Bob Gibson, then I’m taking applications. Baseball doesn’t reward individual greatness, though, to the extent as other team sports. Maybe that was part of the problem. As long as we view those Red Sox greats as a collection of individuals, we fall into the same trap that they did: it was them against the world, and when the pressure came, they cracked. Even the Splendid Splinter himself hit a mere .200 in his only World Series appearance. It’s circumstantial, of course, and it reeks of being just another effort to explain the past, in the hopes that it will never, ever, repeated itself.

Demons that have been exorcised, like a cancer, lurk in the corner of every shadow, frightening but also empowering. The bleakness of those years make each win, each World Series since then, all the sweeter, as long as we remember what came before.

So we talk and, yes, we remember.