Curse of the Bambino

Lore & Background

Although the selling of Ruth has often been noted as the beginning of the Red Sox's decline, the term "curse of the Bambino" was not in common use until the publication of the book The Curse of the Bambino by Dan Shaughnessy in 1990. It became a key part of Red Sox lore in the media thereafter. The curse first appears at the end of chapter two in a letter to Mr. Shaughnessy from Rev. Darrell Berger of the First Parish Unitarian Church in Scituate, Massachusetts. Rev. Berger writes that the selling of Ruth is "the sin that cannot be atoned for" and that a curse is "a folkwise way of explaining the unexplainable." In standard curse lore, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee used the proceeds from the sale to finance the production of a Broadway musical, usually said to be No, No, Nanette. In fact, Frazee backed many productions before and after Ruth's sale, and No, No, Nanette did not see its first performance until five years after the Ruth sale and two years after Frazee sold the Red Sox. Neither the lore, nor the debunking of it, entirely tells the story. Yankee fans taunted the Red Sox with chants of "1918!" one weekend in September 1990, and the demeaning chant echoed at Yankee Stadium each time the Red Sox were there.

In Their Own Story

The air inside Fenway Park hung heavy on October 20, 2003. The Red Sox had just lost Game 7 of the American League Championship Series to the Yankees, collapsing in extra innings yet again. In a dimly lit bar near Kenmore Square, an old man in a faded 1946 jersey stared into his beer, whispering to no one in particular. "It's over," he muttered. "The Bambino won't let us have it." The room fell silent, the collective weight of eighty-five years pressing down on the shoulders of everyone present. They knew the script by heart: hope, agony, and the inevitable shadow that followed them home. But deep in the hallowed halls of history, a new chapter was waiting to be written, one where the ghost would finally have to let go.

Reader's Guide

The Red Sox lost four World Series appearances between 1920 and 2003: in 1946, 1967, 1975, and 1986. The curse ended when the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, prefaced by them overcoming a 3–0 deficit against the Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series (ALCS), the first and, as of 2025, only time an MLB team won a best-of-seven playoff series after losing the first three games.

Did You Know?

• The curse was named after Babe Ruth, who was known as "The Bambino."
• The Red Sox won five of the first fifteen World Series titles before the drought.
• The curse became a focal point of the Yankees–Red Sox rivalry.
• A "reverse curve" road sign on Storrow Drive was graffitied to read "Reverse The Curse" and was removed well before the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series.