So called 'curse' is nothing but a hoax

For the past two years, America's baseball writers have been pigging out on stories about alleged curses surrounding the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs. To me, this is simply the latest example of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

As far as the Boston Red Sox are concerned, the sale of Babe Ruth in 1918 is no different than today's annual free-agent sweepstakes. Had Ruth been around in recent years, I'm sure the Yankees would have waved millions in his face and he'd have walked.

What kind of a curse is it where your team has at least had four chances to lose a World Series since their 1918 championship. Look west and we discover the lowly Chicago White Sox. While the Red Sox have been fortunate enough to have had Boston all to themselves following the departure of the Braves in 1953, the poor White Sox continue to play second fiddle to the Cubs. The White Sox last won a World Championship in 1917. They won the pennant, then tossed the 1919 World Series. If that's not grounds for a curse, I don't know what is. Since then, they have won one pennant, in 1959. Every year they keep finding places to add seats to Fenway Park which strains at the seams with customers while the White Sox wouldn't know what a full house looks like. Tell me who is cursed.

Here is another curse they never mention. I call it the curse of original expansion. Do you realize that of the four teams they added to the majors in 1961 and 1962, two of them still have failed to make the World Series. A third, the Anaheim Angels, failed to win a pennant in the 20th century and finally made it in 2002.

They ruined the beautiful symmetry of the majors when the American League expanded in 1961. The Washington Senators/Texas Rangers have now waited 43 years to hang a flag in one of the four stadiums they have called home. The Angels couldn't get in a World Series for their beloved owner Gene Autry before finally making it long after his death and in the 21st century.

The New York Mets have been fortunate enough to win four pennants after having started out as the worst team anyone ever saw.

The Houston Astros learned about heartbreak for the first time this year when even the presence of Roger Clemens couldn't stop the Cardinals from putting them where they belonged. I mean, come on, no one can tell me that any team that had won 111 games going into that final NLCS contest didn't deserve being in the World Series. Then there is the Astros, once known as the Houston Colt .45s, when they played in tiny Colt Stadium while the Astrodome was being built. It's now been 42 years since they were invented and the state of Texas still pines for that initial World Series.

You see, the game of baseball has been around for a long time. The National League was born 1876 and the American League earned big league status in 1901. Thre are a lot of teams and a lot of threads that run through the grand old game. All you have to do is look and what might be curses pop up all the time.

As far as I'm concerned, the only real curse involves a goat, the 1945 World Series and the Cubs. And even that, like so many others, is more bad baseball than anything else.