The Curse of the Bambino
HBO's wry, enlightening account of 80-plus years of the Boston Red Sox's travails is a fusion of wit and history. "Everything's going fine," says one of this documentary's talking heads, speaking of the Red Sox's legacy of 11th-hour screw-ups. "Then: boom. It's like watchingThe Wizard of Ozand Dorothy is ripped apart at the end by flying monkeys." Comic Steven Wright compares the team's history to a Dickens novel, and Denis Leary says love of the Red Sox is "sado-masochism." The problem is that Boston's doomstruck organization, fans say, has been in karmic payback since 1920 for then-owner Harry Frazee's sale of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. Historians dismiss claims that Frazee used the money to finance Broadway'sNo, No, Nanette, and there's evidence the self-destructive Ruth had actually become a liability for the team. In any case, the symbiotic fortunes of the Yankees and Red Sox is entertainingly summarized here.--Tom Keogh