When does the Yankees' World Series drought become a curse?
By Jake Mintz
FOX Sports MLB Writer
Think of the poor 12-year-old Yankees fans.
I coach youth baseball in New York City. Last fall, one of the kids on the 12-year-old team showed up in a Luke Voit Yankees shirsey. Naturally, being the avid baseball connoisseur that I am, I asked him his thoughts on Voit and the Yankees’ chances in the upcoming postseason.
Immediately, the childish innocence vanished from his eyes, and with the resigned tone of a seasoned daytime sports radio caller, he said: "They’ll blow it, just like they always do."
That's when it hit me: None of these pre-teen New Yorkers has ever seen the Bronx Bombers win the World Series.
Born after Nov. 4, 2009, my Little Leaguers have experienced only unfulfilling Yankees baseball. For them, the Boston Red Sox, winners of two world championships since 2013, are the epitome of October clutch, while the Tampa Bay Rays are the unstoppable regular-season juggernaut with an endless supply of talented players.
For millennials like me who grew up in the shadow of the dominant Core Four Yankees teams in the late ‘90s, that paradigm is inconceivable. As long as I’ve breathed air and watched baseball, Yankees victories have felt inevitable. If not this game, then the next. If not this year, then in the year to come.
But facts are facts, and these young Manhattanites have never basked in the glow of a title, never seen their favorite players lift that "piece of metal."
The Yanks haven’t won since 2009. The 2010s were just the second decade ever in which the Yankees didn’t win a World Series (the ‘80s were the other). Their current 12-season drought is the franchise’s third-longest since they changed their name to the Yankees (1979-96 and 1962-76 being the other two).
To be clear, this is not a franchise in crisis. The Yankees are not in any way, shape or form a "bad team." In fact, they’re probably one of the five best-positioned franchises in the league. They’ll head into 2022 with five straight postseason appearances, a stacked lineup full of star power, the best pitcher on earth not named Jacob, one of the top farm systems in the game and a player development apparatus that churns out top prospects.
Between all that and their ownership group’s (relative) willingness to spend in free agency, chances are the Yankees will stumble into a title at some point in the next handful of years. That’s just math.
But what if they don’t? When do bad luck and random chance in October become a slump? When does that slump become a drought? And most importantly, when does a drought become a curse? Remember, the Red Sox had a 12-year drought at one point, too … and then it continued for another 74 years.
Any discussion of a baseball curse has to start with the Curse of the Bambino. If you’re reading this, you know the deal: The Red Sox win the World Series in 1918, trade star pitcher Babe Ruth to the Yankees two years later and then don’t capture another title until 2004. Ruth turns into a home run god, and Fenway Park spends almost a century as a playground of sports misery.
But while Sox fans often linked their stretch of misfortune to the ill-fated Ruth trade, the term itself didn’t gain widespread popularity until Dan Shaughnessy’s 1990 book, "The Legend of the Curse of the Bambino."
Now, because passionate fans are always on the lookout for supernatural excuses to explain what is usually managerial ineptitude or poor play, baseball history is littered with curses. After the Giants left uptown Manhattan for San Francisco in 1957, they were denied a title until 2010 by "The Curse of Coogan’s Bluff," a reference to their old home at the Polo Grounds. The 1919 White Sox threw the World Series for a quick buck, which hexed the franchise until 2005 with "The Curse of the Black Sox."
But the best baseball curse comes from Osaka, Japan. When the hometown Hanshin Tigers won the championship in 1985, fans of the club celebrated by stealing a life-size statue of Colonel Sanders from outside a nearby KFC and tossing it into a canal. The team has not won a title since.
In 2009, to try to break the curse, divers recovered the original statue of Colonel Sanders. It's now on display outside a different KFC near the Tigers’ home stadium, but the club is still seeking its first title since the colonel went for a swim.
Of course, the Cubs had a famous hex, too: "The Curse of the Billy Goat." But I have to note that the timeline of that one gets a bit jumbled in the retelling. Chicago won the World Series in 1908 and then lost its next seven appearances, including in 1945, when the Cubs faced the Tigers in the Fall Classic.
As the story goes, local tavern owner William Sianis brought his pet goat to Game 4 of the '45 Series at Wrigley Field. The goat was bothering other fans, so Sianis was asked to take his goat and go, at which point an incensed Sianis allegedly placed a hex on the hometown team. The Cubs didn’t appear in another World Series until their curse-smashing run in 2016.
First off, Bill Sianis was definitely in the wrong, even if he is maybe the godfather of "Bark at the Park" night. Look, I too think the rules about what you can and cannot bring into a ballpark are getting too restrictive, but my guy, you can’t bring a PET GOAT INTO A STADIUM, LET ALONE FOR A WORLD SERIES GAME.
Could you imagine if someone had rolled up to Game 4 of the Fall Classic in Atlanta a few months ago with a freakin’ goat, screaming at everyone about curses? Said fan would’ve been laughed off the premises. Good on the 1945 Wrigley Field security crew for its professionalism.
But more importantly, as it relates to any burgeoning Yankees jinx, it took 37 years of Cubs futility for someone to even think to curse them. In Boston, it took 70 years or so before someone labeled the Ruth trade a curse.
Considering that the Yanks are only 12 years into their current schneid, it seems like a few more decades need to roll by before we can begin to consider the presence of a curse. Those Little Leaguers have to at least graduate high school first.
But if a curse does bubble up, what will we name it? Had the Yanks won in ‘08 in their final year at the old Yankee Stadium (instead of in ‘09, year one at the new place), "The Curse of the House That Ruth Built" would have been perfect. Maybe if Austin Jackson had turned into a superstar (they traded him for Curtis Granderson before the 2010 season), he could’ve been the impetus for a curse.
As dark as it is, the passing of longtime Yankees owner George Steinbrenner in 2010 would probably be the moment fans point to. There’s certainly a segment of hard-core Yankees fans who have been critical of ownership in the "Post-Boss Era," so maybe Steinbrenner is floating around in the great beyond, putting a hex on the Bronx Bombers until they blow past the luxury tax by $100 million or something.
Granted, the Yanks will probably win it all in 2022, but if they don’t, keep "The Curse of The Boss" in the back of your mind — even if we’re still another generation or so away from that reality.
Jake Mintz is the louder half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He’s an Orioles fan living in New York City, and thus, he leads a lonely existence most Octobers. If he’s not watching baseball, he’s almost certainly riding his bike. You can follow him on Twitter @Jake_Mintz.
