The Plague of Losing

During the sixth inning of Game 2 of the ALDS between the Yankees and the Indians, TBS was about to go to commercial when on the infield, cameras caught sight of a squirrel hopping around near first base.

Could the appearance in Cleveland of the very same Yankee Stadium squirrel who jinxed both Boston and Seattle during the pennant race from the right field foul pole, the 2007 version of the 2002 Angels "rally monkey," could it be that he brought his magic to the midwest? To most Yankee fans, this was a good sign.

... Unless you read this August 30th article by Teddy Kider in The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/sports/baseball/30squirrel.html

If so, you knew this was coming all along, just like I did.

Then, the swarm came, and for certain, our fate was sealed.

The eighth inning ate Joba Chamberlain, the Yankees' golden calf, alive as midges from Lake Erie derailed New York's World Series hopes. After dominating Indians hitters the inning before, Chamberlain was driven far enough into distraction despite the incessant spritzing of OFF! on his cap and jersey -- without giving up a base hit, he allowed the Tribe to tie the game at 1-1 on a walk, a sacrifice bunt, and two wild pitches. It was as if everything aligned so that Cleveland could be impervious to the bugs -- Indians pitcher Fausto Carmona looked like the second coming of Cy Young as he overpowered the best offense in baseball for nine innings and just three hits with a 96 MPH sinker, thriving in the same elements. Our best pitcher, Chamberlain (34 K's, 0.38 ERA in 24.0 IP), couldn't match, and that's why the Yankees are now out of the playoffs.

TBS sideline reporter Craig Sager later claimed, as the Yankees were holding on for dear life in extra innings, that the bugs came out just for one day a year. One day -- this day, during this game.

That's what it took for a rodent and insects to convince me, finally, that I am the fan of a cursed franchise.

* * *

The cruelest tease from the baseball Gods came in the form of a set of upper deck tickets, bought at double the face value, that I snagged from my buddy Billy a few weeks back to be in the crowd for Monday's Game 4 loss to Cleveland, the actual season-ending defeat. The night before I watched the Yankees come from behind in a do-or-die Game 3 to force one more battle in the Bronx, half cursing the fact that now I had to go to the game despite knowing the tragic fate of my team -- I held onto the slimmest hopes that the momentum had changed, that I was crazy, that the Yankees were still the Yankees despite clutch regular-season players like Jorge Posada, Derek Jeter, and the infamous playoff puzzler Alex Rodriguez hitting less than .200 combined in the series... something, anything, to make my gloomy premonition go away.

I convinced myself over and over again that the team couldn't lose Game 4 because I was there, and this was my first playoff game -- after all, that's not how the script goes.

Five hours of traffic delayed my arrival into Yankee Stadium, where my friend Sean and I had planned to be in our seats for the pre-game festivities and to cheer on the Yanks as they took the field. Instead, we were climbing within the stadium's concourse when Indians leadoff hitter Grady Sizemore -- a player who I had lambasted to the point of making a mock Facebook group that decried all the hype given to him by writers on ESPN.com -- launched a flat sinker from Yankees' ace Chien-Ming Wang into the right-field bleachers for an instant Indians lead which they never relinquished.

We hadn't been there to see the beginning of the end, and I was angry because irrationally, I thought I could stop it -- after all, I was at the game, dammit!

There rest is unbearable history, as the Yankees went down 6-1 fast, and then proceeded to launch a few solo home runs to keep me dangling from a string that I knew was going to be snipped at some point. Stubbornly, I turned my hat inside out, cheered raucously and vocally, and went down swinging like Posada in the ninth against Borowski. I had no choice -- when you get on the ship in April, no matter how bleak it gets, you have to stay on board until its over.

The worst part? Yankee fans knew it, conceded defeat, and began to direct their chanting in the eighth inning towards "Jo-oe Tor-ree!" "Jo-oe Tor-ree!", the soon-to-be-ex-Yankee manager in homage to his 12 years of service to the team. Trying to hang on to any slight hope, I only sat on my hands as he walked to the mound to talk with reliever Jose Veras. I knew the end, but couldn't acknowledge nor accept it -- though its something I should have gotten used to over the last few years.

* * *

The curse is still alive, baseball fans -- in two places, in two different leagues.

For the National League, the Chicago Cubs will remain the jinxed franchise of the senior circuit for the 100th season, as they won their last World Series in 1908. With great expectations to break the insurmountable curse this year after signing Alfonso Soriano, re-signing Aramis Ramirez, and hiring new manager Lou Pinella, they were promptly swept by the upstart Arizona Diamondbacks in the NLDS-- a team, appropriately, that was considered to be rebuilding and had little pressure to succeed with a batch of young, inexperienced players.

In the American League... its the Yankees, a team who now makes the playoffs each and every year, only to prove to be the automatic out due to internal pressure and failing efforts against younger, upstart clubs -- and its by far the more severe curse of the two.

Why?

...Because the outset of the curse was brought upon by the main rival, the Boston Red Sox, reversing their own losing ways during the 2004 ALCS and transplanting the "loser" tag onto the Yankees by beating them after facing the worst possible situation, down 3-0 to a team that symbolized all the things that they weren't -- winners, 26-time World Champions. Once the antithesis to futility, four losses to them team that represented everything that they weren't -- long hair, beards, and anti-corporate, outspoken players -- transformed the Yankees into the chokers the Red Sox were since Boston's frugal ownership sold Babe Ruth to New York, creating the "Curse of the Bambino."

...Because each year since 2004, they've had arguably baseball's most talented team and lift the hopes of the die-hard fans for six straight months before leaving them flat in one week's time in October. At least, during most years, Cubs fans know that they're out of the race in June and can get out before it hurts too bad.

...Because baseball fans of other teams can never, and will never want to, relate to any amount of suffering incurred to a fan of a team that won 16 more championships than the next best team (St. Louis Cardinals, 10 World Championships, one of them being last October) -- because to them, Yankee fans have had it too good. They're spoiled, and they can't understand pain.

I'm here to tell you, I can now understand, recognize and process this pain... and I think, again, I'm gonna have a lot of practice, so I better get used to it.

Not that you'd care if you aren't a Yankee fan, anyway.

-- NJW