Baseball News - The Curse Lives on, The Dynasty Dies

The sun will rise tomorrow. The grass will be a familiar shade of green. Somewhere, people will die, somewhere, a child is born to take the wings and brunt of the single most dangerous and passionate rivalry in sports -- perhaps in life. The Red Sox are American League Champions, and yet still, all of this will still happen like it always has, and hopefully always will. Is there a curse? Who knows? Did the Red Sox slug it into submission last night? Most definitely not. What they did though, may be more significant -- more painful -- more important.

Nine innings and four hours last night is what it took the Boston Red Sox, Johnny Damon, David Ortiz and a bewildered, emotionally driven Derek Lowe to end the modern Yankee dynasty. It goes nowhere from here. Two years in a row now, the enemy has celebrated on Yankee ground, and although they’ll come out in December and make some great moves, although they’ll come out in February and say the right things, this is no longer a team that expects to win, it’s a team that expects they will win, and although that’s cheap semantics, within that lies a stark and dangerous difference.


A big damned ogre with a bat

The truth is, folks, there are no ghosts in Yankee stadium. Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth, DiMaggio and Munson aren’t flying around the borders of the wall and messing with the game being played. But maybe there is a curse. For all this celebration, what the Red Sox haven’t done yet, is the same thing they haven’t done for 86 years, and if they don’t, maybe the curse lives on. Maybe it fades and dies.

One thing though that can’t be denied is that the Yankees are not a team of intangibles, of unbeatable attributes unnoticeable or undetectable. They’re just a collective group of talented men this time. This time they failed to come together, this time they failed to get the job done.

Within that may be the greatest irony of all. Looking over this series and season, over Cashman’s trades and Torre’s moves, the team that may have killed the dynasty -- that has put the curse in critical jeopardy wasn’t the Red Sox. It was the Yankees.

That may be the greatest collapse of all.




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