Superstition Ain't The Way

"We're cursed."

That's what the Chicago Cubs, the, Boston Red Sox, and their fans are saying. Curses that have denied the Red Sox and the Cubs from winning the series since before the Jazz Age have been blamed for both of their pennant losses to, respectively, those expansion upstarts from Miami (the Marlins) and the hated Yankees. Get real, Cubs and Sox fans. Your teams lost because they let these silly superstitions weigh so heavily on their minds that, at crucial moments in the pennant races, they choked. Curses had nothing to do with it. Believing in curses had everything to do with it. That and George Steinbrenner's monopolization of the best talent with his cash.

Curse, my foot. You see the Seattle Mariners whine about never having won the Series? You think they blame a curse? You think going against the Kansas City Royals in 1980 intimidated Major League Baseball's most hapless team, the Philadelphia Phillies? Philadelphia kicked Royal butt! It was the most shocking victory in World Series history! (One of the most, anyway.) You think they worried about a curse? C'mon, guys. Even believing in a curse - and thus deflecting the blame from your own stupidity - can't excuse Bill Buckner's stupendous ground ball mistake resulting in Boston's loss of the 1986 Series to the . . . Mets!

Get over it. Stop bitching about curses, and go out next year and . . . play ball! 

(P.S. To the Montreal Expos - you really are jinxed. Why does a city full of snooty Canucks have an MLB franchise anyway? Hit the showers before Bud Seelig sends you there himself.)