page_title: Curse of the Bambino
section_title: Lore
hierarchical_section_title: Curse of the Bambino / Lore
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Harry Frazee
context_page_description: The Curse of the Bambino was a superstitious sports curse evolving from the failure of Major League Baseball team Boston Red Sox to win the World Series in the 86-year period from 1918 to 2004. While some fans took the curse seriously, most used the expression in a tongue-in-cheek manner.
  This misfortune began after the Red Sox sold star player Babe Ruth for $125,000 to the New York Yankees after the 1919 season. Before that point, the Red Sox had been one of the most successful professional baseball franchises, winning the first World Series and amassing five of the first fifteen World Series titles. After the sale, they went without a title for nearly a century, as the previously lackluster Yankees became one of the most successful professional sports franchises in North America. The curse became a focal point of the Yankees–Red Sox rivalry over the years.
  Talk of the curse as an ongoing phenomenon ended in 2004, when the Red Sox came back from a 0–3 deficit to beat the Yankees in the best-of-seven American League Championship Series, and then swept the St. Louis Cardinals to win the World Series.
context_section_description: Although it had long been noted that the selling of Ruth had been the beginning of a decline in the Red Sox' fortunes, 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, and Shaughnessy's book became required reading in some high school English classes in New England.
  Although the title drought dated back to 1918, the sale of Ruth to the Yankees was completed January 3, 1920. In standard curse lore, Red Sox owner and theatrical producer 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. In 1921, Red Sox manager Ed Barrow left to take over as general manager of the Yankees. Other Red Sox players were also later sold or traded to the Yankees.
  Neither the lore, nor the debunking of it, entirely tells the story. As Leigh Montville wrote in The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth, the production No, No, Nanette had originated as a non-musical stage play called My Lady Friends, which opened on Broadway in December 1919. That play had, indeed, been financed as a direct result of the Ruth deal. Various researchers, including Montville and Shaughnessy, have pointed out that Frazee had close ties to the Yankees owners, and that many of the player deals, as well as the mortgage deal for Fenway Park itself, had to do with financing his plays.
  Yankee fans taunted the Red Sox with chants of "1918!" one weekend in September 1990. The demeaning chant echoed at Yankee Stadium each time the Red Sox were there. Yankee fans also taunted the Red Sox with signs saying "1918!", "CURSE OF THE BAMBINO", pictures of Babe Ruth, and wearing "1918!" T-shirts each time they were at the Stadium.
caption: Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2009:08:27 13:46:49", "Image ExifOffset": "2182", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:08:27 13:46:49", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:08:27 13:46:49", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "347", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "551", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}