Signs and Portents
Here's a sticker I've been seeing around town a lot since the baseball playoffs started a few weeks ago. I like the sentiment. It harkens back to a White Sox shirt I bought in 2005 that says, "No such thing as curses. Just win."
There are two ways people tend to approach sports. I'm a science-minded skeptic, and while I've rarely been interested enough to do the math myself, I place high value in statistical probability as I contemplate an outcome. Chicago goes for a different approach, choosing instead to appeal to unseen strange and mystical powers of the netherworld that somehow dictate what sports teams do. These people believe in curses, and nobody believes in curses more than the fans of the Chicago Cubs.
In baseball's early days, the Chicago Cubs were a really good baseball team, winning a number of National League pennants and two world championships in the first decade of the 20th century. But they hit a drought after their win in 1908, thanks in part to the rise of Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees. (The Cubs were on the losing end of Ruth's called shot in 1932.) But things started looking up for a while in the 1940s, and the Cubs finally made it back to the World Series in 1945.
Then one day, a cheeseburger salesman named George Sianis, owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, decided he was going to take a goat named Murphy to one of the World Series games. And I know the world was a different place in 1945, but even then the owners of professional sports teams were reluctant to let you bring farm animals into the stands. People started complaining, so the Wrigley staff kicked Sianis and his goat to the curb. This enraged Sianis, the story goes, and he supposedly snarled, "Them Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more." And so dawned the curse of the Billy Goat. The Cubs lost the '45 series to the Detroit Tigers, and they've never gone to another series until now. And Cubs fans believe with a deranged devotion I find borderline insane that it's all because of this goat.
Now, a science-minded skeptic might say that the century or so of Cubs failure owes more to cheap or distracted ownership and bad management and the fact that the Cubs have rarely acted like they have any interest in playing baseball. This skeptic might try pointing at 108 years of statistics to support the claim, but a Cubs fan won't hear any of that. No. It's the goat, and they cite any number of freak incidents that have nothing to do with goats to back them up. There's the black cat that ran across the field during a division game against the Miracle Mets of 1969 when the Cubs were poised to win the pennant. There was Leon Durham's dropped ball against the Padres that let a pennant slip away in 1984. And there's the horrible story of the Bartman Ball in 2003, when the Cubs were four outs away from going to the series.
They've tried any number of schemes to reverse the curse. A restaurant blew up the Bartman Ball and turned it into a soup in 2004, and you often hear about police or Wrigley security finding the severed heads of goats lying around the ball park. (No joke. This actually happens with astounding frequency.) But nothing's ever worked ... at least not until 2009, when the Cubs were finally bought by owners with an interest in baseball who were committed to a long-term project of actually building a good team from the ground up. These owners hired the stats-minded guy who'd ended the Red Sox championship drought in 2004 by focusing more on game play and less on the team's relationship with livestock. And now, finally, the curse is over. The Cubs might not win the World Series, but at least they got there, and what happens next is on them.
So #$@& curses.
No such thing as curses. Just win.
Signs and Portents
Here's a sticker I've been seeing around town a lot since the baseball playoffs started a few weeks ago. I like the sentiment. It harkens back to a White Sox shirt I bought in 2005 that says, "No such thing as curses. Just win."
There are two ways people tend to approach sports. I'm a science-minded skeptic, and while I've rarely been interested enough to do the math myself, I place high value in statistical probability as I contemplate an outcome. Chicago goes for a different approach, choosing instead to appeal to unseen strange and mystical powers of the netherworld that somehow dictate what sports teams do. These people believe in curses, and nobody believes in curses more than the fans of the Chicago Cubs.
In baseball's early days, the Chicago Cubs were a really good baseball team, winning a number of National League pennants and two world championships in the first decade of the 20th century. But they hit a drought after their win in 1908, thanks in part to the rise of Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees. (The Cubs were on the losing end of Ruth's called shot in 1932.) But things started looking up for a while in the 1940s, and the Cubs finally made it back to the World Series in 1945.
Then one day, a cheeseburger salesman named George Sianis, owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, decided he was going to take a goat named Murphy to one of the World Series games. And I know the world was a different place in 1945, but even then the owners of professional sports teams were reluctant to let you bring farm animals into the stands. People started complaining, so the Wrigley staff kicked Sianis and his goat to the curb. This enraged Sianis, the story goes, and he supposedly snarled, "Them Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more." And so dawned the curse of the Billy Goat. The Cubs lost the '45 series to the Detroit Tigers, and they've never gone to another series until now. And Cubs fans believe with a deranged devotion I find borderline insane that it's all because of this goat.
Now, a science-minded skeptic might say that the century or so of Cubs failure owes more to cheap or distracted ownership and bad management and the fact that the Cubs have rarely acted like they have any interest in playing baseball. This skeptic might try pointing at 108 years of statistics to support the claim, but a Cubs fan won't hear any of that. No. It's the goat, and they cite any number of freak incidents that have nothing to do with goats to back them up. There's the black cat that ran across the field during a division game against the Miracle Mets of 1969 when the Cubs were poised to win the pennant. There was Leon Durham's dropped ball against the Padres that let a pennant slip away in 1984. And there's the horrible story of the Bartman Ball in 2003, when the Cubs were four outs away from going to the series.
They've tried any number of schemes to reverse the curse. A restaurant blew up the Bartman Ball and turned it into a soup in 2004, and you often hear about police or Wrigley security finding the severed heads of goats lying around the ball park. (No joke. This actually happens with astounding frequency.) But nothing's ever worked ... at least not until 2009, when the Cubs were finally bought by owners with an interest in baseball who were committed to a long-term project of actually building a good team from the ground up. These owners hired the stats-minded guy who'd ended the Red Sox championship drought in 2004 by focusing more on game play and less on the team's relationship with livestock. And now, finally, the curse is over. The Cubs might not win the World Series, but at least they got there, and what happens next is on them.
So #$@& curses.
No such thing as curses. Just win.