We Don't Need No Stinkin' Curses

by Sarah Hope on Nov 24, 2006 6:43 PM CST

In this god-forsaken time we call the "off-season", we can talk about signings, piss and moan about people we're not signing, and fight with fellow bloggers over atheism and the needless celebrations it excludes.

OR we can do something REALLY productive!!

As some of you know, I am a fan of the show "The Ghost Whisperer", or as I like to refer to it - "My Boobs See Dead People". (By the by, the episode tonight is about a posessed baseball pitcher)

In between my readings of David Herbert Donald and Fabio illustrations, I was perusing a blog by famed medium and co-executive producer of The Ghost Whisperer, James Van Praagh, in which he spoke on the validity of curses. He writes:

Many people ask me what a curse is and if it is indeed a reality. My answer is a resounding "Yes!" A curse is a thought, a creation of energy with an intention behind it. The intention is of a lower level, usually of revenge or of blockage: keeping something from someone or creating something that will happen to someone. A curse can become magnified as more people give it energy. For instance, we often hear in folklore about the existence of various curses: the more you believe it, the more you give it life.

So we've been stepping in goat poop on Sheffield Ave all these years for nothing?!?!? What the crap? (pun intended)

For the half a century following Sianis' tirade, we've tried bringing goats in, bringing them to Houston and getting refused in hopes of transferring the curse - all the while, we could have just stopped believing in it? I don't buy it.

So just to get an idea, how many of you strongly believe in the curse? (Screw what Van Braaaaaagh says, I wanna know)

What was the most clear sign of The Goat? Bartman? Santo and the black cat?

And stopping short of any kind of black magic or voodoo (I don't need that kind of guilt on my conscience, and I really don't like eating chicken heads) what are some ideas of breaking the curse this off-season?

1st prize goes to the most creative response.

Poll

Do you believe in the curse of the billy goat?

No way.

29 votes

Heck yeah! I won't go near one from February to October.

9 votes

Dammit, Sarah, shhh!! Don't anger it!

13 votes

51 votes | Poll has closed

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of SB Nation or Al Yellon, managing editor (unless it's a FanPost posted by Al). FanPost opinions are valued expressions of opinion by passionate and knowledgeable baseball fans.

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Comments

The joyful thing about being a Cub fan.

is living with all of the various curses. What would the team's followers be without those downcast faces when the unexplainable happens over and over again? Of course, we'd probably be happy with a few WS rings under our belts ... but would we really appreciate it as much when it we do win it?

I'm not a big believer in the supernatural--or James van Praagh, but ... be very quiet when talking about the freakin' goat.

"Let's kick their asses and get the hell out of here!" GA Custer, 1863.

by Littlerock Rynofan on Nov 24, 2006 7:30 PM CST reply actions

Curse the Curse

I believe in the curse.

The first post I ever posted here spoke about how I do believe in a curse. What else can explain our really rotten luck?

My husband, who doesn't understand what the fuss is all about - they are *just* a Baseball Team - he believes that Wrigley Field was built over an Indian burial ground.

Somewhere, not too long ago, someone talked about the history of Wrigley and how it was built on the site of a medical clinic (Don't quote me on that one).

So, maybe it's not the goat that's to blame, but angry disgruntled spirits, Indian or otherwise, who really just want to rest in peace. Pun intended.

So, first step is to determine the nature and origin of the curse. What works for a goat might not work for something else.

If you figure it out, let me know. I'd be happy to participate in any (almost any) ceremony that will take that monkey off our back.

Federer

It's like deja`vu all over again ....

by tigerperson on Nov 24, 2006 7:30 PM CST reply actions

I thought it was built on

the site of an old seminary?
Maybe that was built on an Indian burial ground.

WOODY!!!!

by Sarah Hope on Nov 24, 2006 8:04 PM CST up reply actions

Alright, according to

http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/chc/ballpark/index.jsp it says....

"Originally known as Weeghman Park, Wrigley Field was built on the grounds once occupied by a seminary. "

But it also says that Wrigley was the where Kerry Wood had 20 strikeouts in 98, but I remember watching that and I could swear that it was in Houston.

WOODY!!!!

by Sarah Hope on Nov 24, 2006 8:09 PM CST up reply actions

Ok fine.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qD3Jfv3LICI

My memory is failing me.
Gotta love Youtube for sticking it to mlb and their ridiculous charges for watching these videos.

WOODY!!!!

by Sarah Hope on Nov 24, 2006 8:27 PM CST up reply actions

I don't believe in the curse...

of anything.

I do admit I talk about it and complain about it, but that's just because sometimes it's too much work to blame the actual people. There's so many people that contribute and have contributed to the Cubs problems.

"I don't talk. I just let what I do talk for myself." -Johan Santana

by sparkles721 on Nov 24, 2006 8:43 PM CST reply actions

Transfer the Curse

Hi Sarah,

Funny stuff. I liked when we "transferred the curse" back in 2003 to the Houston Astros. I'm sure we all remember when a couple of Cub fans took a goat to Minutemaid Park and demanded admittance during the heat of the pennant race. The Astros crashed and burned soon after that. Interesting, as we had tried everything for the previous 60 years...who knew that it would be so easy to just pass the curse on like contagious cooties.

"The Transfer" only stuck with them for that one month though. How do we get it to stick with them or the Cardinals permanently? Maybe it has something to do with denying access to Caballos?

by Ghost of Fred Merkle on Nov 24, 2006 9:51 PM CST reply actions

I love it when every new Cubs Manager...

says with great confidence hwo there is nothing to the curse (of course I agree with them), but it's hilarious, spooky?, whatever how so few managers leave Chicago and are successful afterwards.

I'd love to hear a new manager say something like:
"Hell, yes the curse has something to do with the Cubs losing. When I get canned in 3-4 years I want the rest of baseball to remember that the Cubs were cursed before I arrived."

Even if he doesn't believe in curse, I imagine that Dusty may have a few choice curses for the Cubs organization right now.

by DudeVf1 on Nov 24, 2006 10:41 PM CST reply actions

are we

talking yet?

TRAMMELL!

by Faith plus 1 on Nov 24, 2006 11:47 PM CST reply actions

I would answer you,

but we are not speaking, so I can't.
Hrrmph.

WOODY!!!!

by Sarah Hope on Nov 25, 2006 8:05 AM CST up reply actions

curse

5 outs away from a world series and we go home.what curse???half the team on the d.l. the last 3 years. what curse. sign d.lee and he breaks his hand the next week.what curse??we come up with the 2 most dominant pitchers in the last 20 years in wood and prior and their careers go down the tubes.i,ll say it again what curse??????????

by NOMAR on Nov 25, 2006 4:32 AM CST reply actions

Curse The Curse

Ah.. but don't forget Game 5 in the l984 National League series between the Cubs and San Diego. You will recall that in the bottom of the 7th, Leon Durham missed a routine ground ball - evidently someone spilled Gatorade on his regular mitt - as a result, he was fielding with a borrowed mitt, hence the error which ultimately gave the Padres the lead; 6-3. The Cubs lost the series 3 games to 2 and our hopes were dashed due to Gatorade. If this isn't a curse... then what is??!!?

Federer

It's like deja`vu all over again ....

by tigerperson on Nov 25, 2006 12:04 PM CST up reply actions

On the 2 pitchers...

Our brilliant leader, hendry turned them over to Dusty...probably the worst guy in baseball to handle young pitchers...

by DudeVf1 on Nov 25, 2006 6:01 PM CST up reply actions

If there really is a curse

then why have we been able to have the modest successes we've had since the Cianis (sp) goat hex? 1969, 1984, 1998, and 2003, although not world beating years, they were good years for Cubs fans and most any other team in MLB would have been reasonably proud of them. When you consider how absolutely horrible the Cubs were in the fifties, early to mid sixties, and several years sprinkled about in no particular pattern, (can you say 2006?) one would think that any curse worth its salt would be such that the team couldn't win a single game, yet, on occassion, they do. How do you explain that? I'm no curse expert and my Calabrian grandmother who was passed away decades ago and I doubt she would have had much of a theory.

Having watched the New Orleans Saints with some regularity over the years, (I live in what's left of Biloxi, MS; very near to New Orleans)the question of a curse by Marie Laveux (sp) has also been addressed. In the Saints' playoff run of a few years ago, just before the beginning of the game against the then mighty Saint Louis Rams, a group of voodoo queens from the French Quarter did some kind of reverse-the-curse snake dance at mid-field before the game and it certinly worked when the Saints proved to be victorious. Unfortunately, the snake dance was only good for a single game. Maybe we need to hire these folks to do a decursing ritual before every game.

I'm a skeptic on the curse thing though. I think it is a crutch that Cubs fans have used with increasing regularity in recent years. When I was a kid and the Cubs were finishing dead-last in the NL as regularly as the sun came up, nobody spoke of a curse. Poor front office and field management, untalented players, and bad on-field decisions making seem to have evolved to the curse strategem. When each new manager comes into town and even addresses the curse at his PC, he is subconsciously setting up his excuse. Did Lou do that too? Once the curse, real or not, gets into their heads, its over.

by Luigi on Nov 25, 2006 8:05 AM CST reply actions

To stop the curse

First, invite a goat to the game and parade him/her around. Next, have Cubs-Cat day and let everyone with a black cat in free. Before the game let all the cats roam free on the field playing some sort of cat baseball. Of course,have Santo on the field during all this a.k.a. 1969. Last of all, invite Bartman to throw out the first pitch.....then usher him quickly back to his secret hideaway. We all have good laughs, it would be media frenzy. Then go out and end 98 years of frustration. The trouble is, I'm really not saying this in jest. Get over it and move on, dispel all the "curses" and get on with our baseball lives.

Spendry!!!

by mrcubsfan on Nov 25, 2006 9:11 AM CST reply actions

Cat baseball

LOL!!!!

For some reason, the Cubs have been stingy with their goat-letting-in over the years. As if getting a CURSE laid upon them did not teach them a lesson!!

I think you have an excellent idea for a curse quenching day at the ballpark that will appease even the tightest wads in the Cubs organization.

WOODY!!!!

by Sarah Hope on Nov 25, 2006 11:43 AM CST up reply actions

Curses

Ever since the Bartman game I have believed in the billy goat curse. That was so devastatingly horrible that it left the impression if we can't beat the Florida Marlins at home with prior and wood, 2 of the most dominating in the game at the time, then how are we ever going to win?

by CubsBall2202 on Nov 25, 2006 12:39 PM CST reply actions

Enough with the curse, PLEASE!!

The team has been beset with bad luck, to be sure -- but this team has been victimized by a medley of bad baseball decisions, or outright neglect over the years. PK Wrigley has to take much of the blame. He hired idiots to run the team, generally. How about -- Salty Saltwell, a former concessions manager who was GM of the team for a while. (And people are upset about John McDonough!) The appropriately named "Saltwell" was in charge of selling peanuts -- how the hell could he be a GM??)
And don't get me started on the "College Of Coaches."

Baseball laughed at the Cubs. That's not a curse, that's outright absurdity.

Any team that never figured out the 20th Century -- night baseball games -- until 1988 is also asking for trouble.

Let's go back:

1969 -- The Cubs ran out of gas, the Mets never lost a game. They just kept winning, and winning...and Leo Durocher just played the same 8 guys every day. He didn't trust his bench. Even though Durocher changed the face of Cubs baseball for many years -- he's still partly to blame for the collapse.

1984 -- Garvey's Game 4 home run was the real killer, the events of the next day, Game 5 -- were predictable, as the Padres (and their fans -- do not think that wasn't a factor -- I was there, and it's still the loudest baseball game I've ever been to) were on a roll. Somehow, in my eyes, the Cubs would have lost that game, regardless of any error by Durham. Besides, the soon-to-be-abandonded playoff format of 2-3 in the best-of-five wasn't much of a home field advantage. Shouldn't the Cubs have had more home games rather than the Padres? After all, they had a better record. Game 5, for a true home field advantage should have been played in Chicago. It is a curse that the Cubs got the short end of the stick? No, that's just the way MLB set the format up, until they realized that the League Championship Series should be best-of-seven.

1989 -- The Cubs were beaten by a better team. The Giants overall, had better pitching and Will Clark was unstoppable.

1998 -- Well how about that? We beat Dusty Baker in a one-game playoff. That should have taught us that Baker's teams can't win big games. (The 2002 Angels will agree with that)
The Braves were better, there was no contest in that Divisional series.

2003 -- Come on. Forget Bartman. Had Gonzalez NOT kicked what was a double play groundball after the Bartman incident, the whole inning changes.
(And NO thanks to Dusty for his inability to come out and talk to Prior, and there's that matter of crappy Dave Veres coming out of the bullpen for every damn game (at least it seemed Veres was always pitching in a crucial situation)
As in 1984, the momentum swung. The next game was almost a sure loss, even if Grover Cleveland Alexander, Dizzy Dean, or Fergie Jenkins were pitching for the Cubs.

No curse. Stop feeding into the media's storyline.
The Arizona Cardinals haven't won a championship since the late 40's. Are they cursed? No. Their ownership stinks. As with the Cubs, there is NO winning tradition. And, as we noticed this season, on a Monday night in the desert -- bad teams find ways to lose.

The Cubs have found ways to lose for the last 90+ years. Just get over the hump -- win once, change the culture and everything's different.

And by the way, I've forgotten -- but I believe it was Tom Treblehorn who walked a goat around Wrigley Field, so that's been done already.
(Al, perhaps you can verify.)

by Smooth Jazz Man San Diego on Nov 25, 2006 2:46 PM CST reply actions

Goats have been brought in

but on a limited basis.

At the Cubs home opener in 1984, a goat was brought into Wrigley for the first time since 1945.

10 years later, a goat was brought in to stop a record-breaking losing streak at 12. It worked.

In March of 1997, the Cubs held a curse-removing press conference at the Billy Goat Tavern and announced the Old Style Commercial featuring Billy Goat Curse. The Cubs opened the season with a record-setting thirteen straight losses, but refused to bring Sam Sianis and the Goat into Wrigley Field again to stop the streak.

WOODY!!!!

by Sarah Hope on Nov 25, 2006 3:04 PM CST up reply actions

Let's also add

William Wrigley to the parade of idiots who ran the franchise.

Sorry I left him out.

by Smooth Jazz Man San Diego on Nov 25, 2006 2:48 PM CST reply actions

Personally, I think I won.

by Smooth Jazz Man San Diego on Nov 25, 2006 2:55 PM CST reply actions

The more important question shouldl be,

do you believe in The Curse of the Colossus?

by The New Curse on Nov 25, 2006 6:11 PM CST reply actions

Simple answer?

Los Cachorros!

by Laven on Nov 25, 2006 6:25 PM CST reply actions

I Can't Stop Cursing!!!

F*k the f*king curse...sh*t, crap, goddamn, as*h*le.

Sorry, I had to get that out. That's directed at the thought of the "curse".

I truly have trouble uttering the words "curse" and "Cubs" in the same sentence without swearing and throwing my shoe at someone.

If you do believe they are "cursed", then WHY THE HELL ARE YOU A FAN!?! I only say that because if you really believe it to be true, well, then you are rooting for a team that has absolutely no chance of ever winning a World Series...ever. Right? Becuase they're...ahhem...cursed. So they can't win, but you still cheer even though they're cursed...because of a Goat.

I couldn't agree more with Smooth Jazz Man regarding Bartman. That was Gonzo's fault...we should blame the guy with the glove on the field who gets paid to make that play.

With that said, the black cat running around Santo was creepy...but still no curse!

by 10 14 23 26 on Nov 27, 2006 3:09 PM CST reply actions