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The Curse Of Babe Ruth Still Hangs Over Struggling Boston Red Sox

This article is more than 4 years old.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

For the Boston Red Sox, there’s always something on the docket that dates back to the days when Babe Ruth toed the pitching rubber at Fenway Park.

Beantown’s baseball team hasn’t been to the World Series in consecutive years since 1915-16, winning both times. The left-handed Ruth, in the early stages of a seminal career as Major League Baseball’s first great power hitter, won 41 games as a pitcher for those two clubs.

Thus, there was plenty of optimism after the Red Sox defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers in five games last fall to win their ninth World Series, that Boston could win back-to-back again.

It hasn’t been a good start. Heading into Tuesday’s home opener at the Fens against the Toronto Blue Jays, the Red Sox are 3-8.

That start might not be fatal, but it doesn’t auger well.

The fact is, though the Red Sox have won the World Series four times since 2004 under three different managers and general managers, there has been little continuity. They have fallen on their faces in each succeeding season.

The 2004 World Series victory over St, Louis was the team’s first in 86 years and ushered out an era dubbed “The Curse of the Bambino.”

For almost nine decades, the Red Sox hadn’t won since Ruth was sold after the 1919 season by owner Harry Frazee to Jacob Ruppert and the New York Yankees.

The price is well known as $100,000. But the details of the transaction were even worse than that, documented in Jane Leavy’s fine recent book, “The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created.”

Within the confines of those pages, she reveals that economist Michael Haupert found cash ledgers and accounting books in the bowels of the National Baseball Hall of Fame stating that the purchase price for Ruth was in four annual installments of $25,000 each, including $8,750 in interest payments for a total of $108,750.

In addition, Ruppert loaned Frazee $300,000 guaranteed by the deed of Fenway Park. Frazee sent Ruppert  a check for $21,000 in interest after the first year on a loan that wasn’t repaid for 13 years.

“After six years he had paid over $100,000 in interest alone,” Haupert said.

That was equal to the incremental purchase price the Yankees paid Frazee for Ruth.

And imagine this: From 1920-33, Ruth not only helped the Yankees to their first seven of 40 AL pennants and first four of their 27 World Series championships, Ruppert held the Red Sox’s deed to Fenway.

In a side email sent by Leavy to Boomskie on Baseball after the book was published, Haupert actually discovered that the Red Sox paid the taxes and insurance on their own ballpark while Ruppert held the deed. Ruppert also had the right to assume ownership of Fenway if the loan wasn’t repaid.

“In the end, it didn’t cost [Ruppert] anything to buy Babe Ruth,” Haupert said. “He was a genius and Frazee was desperate. So the Red Sox actually paid the Yankees to take Babe Ruth.”

Even now, The Curse in part still remains.

The Yankees of 1998-2000 won the World Series three years in a row, losing only one of 13 games during that period. They were the last team to win the World Series in back-to-back seasons.

The Red Sox haven’t done it since their best player was a guy nicknamed “Babe.”

This season could be part of the litany. It marks the worst start for a defending World Series winner since the 1998 Florida Marlins opened 1-11.

Dave Dombrowski was the general manager of both teams.

Regarding Florida, Dombrowski has long bemoaned never having a chance at back-to-back titles. Marlins owner Wayne Huizenga destroyed the 1997 team after it won that fall’s World Series in seven games over the Cleveland Indians. Huizenga was thwarted in his attempts to build a new ballpark in Miami, and so, he spread his star players around baseball like so many spare parts.

With a vastly retooled team, the Marlins won their 1998 home opener and then lost 11 in row.

In Boston, Dombrowski has no such excuse. He returned virtually the same team that ran through the 2018 season, winning 119 games, including the playoffs and World Series. The lone change is that closer Craig Kimbrel is gone to free agency, but the bullpen wasn’t the problem on a season-opening 11-game western swing through Seattle, Oakland and Arizona where the Red Sox won but a single game in each place.

The starting pitching has been awful, and the team hasn’t hit. The starters went 0-7 with a Major League-worst 8.57 ERA, having given up 53 of an MLB-worst 72 runs. This is virtually the same group that last year won 68 of 108 regular season games and had a 3.77 ERA.

The offense is batting .238 and has scored 46 runs, for a run-differential of minus-26. Last year, the Red Sox led the Majors with a .268 team batting average and 876 runs scored.

Every season, of course, is different, and the start of this one could very well be a hangover from winning the World Series.

“There’s no hangover,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora, starting a very tough second season. “The only hangover is when you come out of a bar and we’ve all been through that.”

If the past is prelude, the Red Sox have had a hangover in the season after each of their World Series titles.

The win in 2004 was followed by a losing sweep in an ’05 American League Division Series.

The victory in 2007 was followed by a loss in the AL Championship Series in ’08.

And the win in 2013, was followed by a full collapse 91-loss season in ’14, including a 5-9 start.

The current streak has left the team befuddled.

There’s bad luck – Brock Holt, the left-handed hitter who accounted for the first cycle in postseason history last October at Yankee Stadium – was poked in the eye by his kid and had to go on the disabled list.

There’s the schedule: Until early Monday morning, the Red Sox hadn’t been back to Boston since they went to spring training in Fort Myers, Florida, in early February.

“You can’t complain about it,” David Price said, “but this has been bad.”

There was anger. Starter Rick Porcello pummeled the Gatorade tub in the Red Sox dugout after the D-backs pummeled him in the fourth inning of a loss in Arizona’s home opener on Friday, smashing it against the wall.

Asked to assess the trials and tribulations of the first 11 games of the season, Cora said simply: “Three and eight.”

It’s early, of course, but sometimes fate is cast and as Yogi Berra once said, “it gets late early.”

The shadow of the Bambino remains.