Since buying Babe Ruth, the Yankees have 26 World Series titles. The Red Sox have found many ways to fall short.
By JOHN ROMANO
Published October 12, 2004
As a child, you had no idea. No understanding of events already consummated, no concept of heartbreak still to come.
You were a Red Sox fan. Wasn't everyone in your neighborhood? No town, and this is not a point to be argued, has loved a team more than Boston loved its Red Sox. Even in 1920. Even in the year you were born.
There was no talk then of the Curse of the Bambino. Babe Ruth had, by that time, been sold by the Red Sox to the New York Yankees. But that was just stupid. Stupid and cheap. It was not yet a scourge for the ages.
Of course, you'd later hear talk of it. How Red Sox owner Harry Frazee, a theater producer, was losing money on Broadway ventures. How he'd already sold some of Boston's best players to New York. How he was infuriated that Ruth was talking about renegotiating his contract.
You'd hear how Frazee had the audacity to say the Yankees were taking a gamble by acquiring Ruth in a straight cash transaction.
It would take years, it would require the passing of generations, before people would look back at the $100,000 sale of Ruth as something different.
Something fateful.
How else to explain it? The Red Sox won the first World Series ever played in 1903. They won five of the first 15 Series, including three with Ruth.
Since the Bambino was sold to New York, the Red Sox have not won another World Series. The Yankees have won 26.
But those are just numbers. They can't convey the frustration, the agony, the near-misses and the simply inexplicable. The perplexing decisions, the slow relay, the blooper pitch, the long fly, the grounder through the legs.
They don't explain how the Red Sox have since reached the World Series four times and lost each one in Game 7.
They don't explain how in the first 90 years of the American League, there were only two one-game playoffs. And the Red Sox lost both.
They don't explain how in the past seven years, the Red Sox have finished second in the American League East. And each time the Yankees finished first.
Being a Red Sox fan means satisfaction is always a pitch away. It means you're never too old to think you've seen it all.
* * *
As a young adult, you thought the wait was over. That the humiliation of the 1920s and the frustration of the 1930s had been put to rest.
Gone were the days of the Yankees using the Red Sox as their personal flea market. You no longer had to think about the Yankees winning their first Series in 1923 with former Red Sox pitchers accounting for three-fourths of the rotation and hitters making up one-third of the lineup.
Frazee was gone and in his place was free-spending Tom Yawkey. Now, the Red Sox were buyers. They bought Lefty Grove from Philadelphia and Joe Cronin from Washington. They bought Ted Williams from a minor-league team out West.
Sure, you were infuriated when Williams hit .406 in 1941 and lost the MVP award to Joe DiMaggio. And it hurt to think the Red Sox may have had the best roster in baseball from 1943 to 1945, if not for players lost to World War II.
But in 1946, the Red Sox returned to the World Series for the first time in your lifetime. Boston had a 3-2 Series lead against the Cardinals, but failed to put them away in Game 6.
Game 7, played in St. Louis, was tied 3-3 in the bottom of the eighth. With two out and Enos Slaughter on first, Harry Walker hit a drive to left-center. Slaughter was running on the pitch and never stopped.
Red Sox shortstop Johnny Pesky went into short leftfield for the relay throw and, as the story goes, hesitated when he saw Slaughter headed toward home. The throw was late, and the Series was lost.
Never mind that history has fiddled with the facts. The story says Slaughter scored from first on a single. You know it was actually ruled a double. And Pesky's delay, which was barely perceptible, is now legend.
Two years later, you were watching again as the Red Sox finished in a first-place tie with Cleveland. The first one-game playoff in AL history was held the next day. And, to the bewilderment of all, Boston manager Joe McCarthy picked the otherwise forgettable Denny Galehouse to pitch.
The Indians bombed the Red Sox, and Galehouse would pitch exactly two innings the rest of his big-league career.
A year later, the Red Sox blew a first-place lead to the Yankees in the final week of the season.
McCarthy, who won the World Series seven times as a Yankee manager, never got the Red Sox into the postseason.
* * *
As a grandparent, you have ached for your children. And your children's children. Because, to a great degree, you understand it is your fault.
You passed on your love of baseball. You imparted your devotion of the Red Sox.
In Boston, you know, the baseball season lasts longer. It goes from New Year's Day to New Year's Eve. It is a part of your life, just as the Red Sox are part of the family and Fenway Park doubles as your summer home.
So, yes, it is your responsibility. The passion your children have for the Red Sox, and the attachment their children have for the game? Your fault.
You wept with them in '67 when the Impossible Dream fell just short, again versus the Cardinals in Game 7. In '72, the Red Sox lost the division by a half-game because their schedule had one game less due to a spring work stoppage. In '74, you watched them blow a late summer division lead.
In '75, the Red Sox were a part of the greatest World Series ever played. And, as is their custom, played the role of the sufferers. Boston won Game 6 on Carlton Fisk's 12th-inning homer off the leftfield foul pole, and had a 3-0 lead going into the sixth inning of Game 7.
That was when scatter-brained pitcher Bill Lee threw a blooper pitch that Tony Perez hit for a two-run homer. A couple of innings later, the Reds were the World Series champions.
That was bad, but it would get worse.
Much worse.
There was the summer of '78 when the Red Sox built a huge division lead, only to squander it all in the fall. This led to the one-game playoff against the Yankees. A crisp, Monday afternoon at Fenway.
Mike Torrez, a pitcher you stole from the Yankees, had a 2-0 lead in the seventh. There were two men on base, but No. 9 hitter Bucky Dent was up.
Dent fouls a pitch off his foot. He spends a couple of minutes walking off the pain, and then more time swapping bats. Torrez stands on the mound. And he does nothing. The infielders are throwing a ball around to keep warm, but Torrez attempts no warmup pitches.
His next pitch to Dent is a fly ball to leftfield. A fly that gets in the wind and keeps traveling. It sails over the Green Monster and into history. The Yankees foil the Red Sox again.
And there was the fall of '86 when the Red Sox were one out from winning the World Series in the 10th inning of Game 6 against the Mets, only to give up a two-run lead with a wild pitch. And to lose it when a ground ball went between the legs of a hobbled first baseman named Bill Buckner.
You suffered through a one-day rain delay and watched the Red Sox lose another Game 7 a night later.
* * *
As a Red Sox fan, you are weary. You have seen hundreds of players and thousands of ballgames. You have seen dedicated fans pass without ever knowing the joy of a World Series celebration.
You have heard the story of a man, sitting alone in a Boston bar, lost in thought. He drains his beer, stands up and says to no one in particular:
"Bucky (bleeping) Dent."
This is your life. That is your team. You thought, by now, you were immune to heartbreak. And then Aaron Boone showed up last October.
You can't say for certain that the Curse of the Bambino is real. But, after all you have seen, you can't say for certain that it is not.
It's coming 'round again. The Red Sox and Yankees begin another playoff series today. The teams, they say, are evenly matched. They talk of hitters and pitchers. Of numbers and tendencies. You know better.
