The Legend of the Curse of the Bambino ANNOTATION
In one frenzied season, a book title has become imprinted in the consciousness of American sports fans. The Curse of the Bambino, a phrase Dan Shaughnessy has coined, will live in infamy for Red Sox fans because it summs up 70 years of horror and heartbreak which all began when Babe Ruth was sold to the Yankees. With old-fashioned New England humor and the authority of a lifelong Red Sox fan, Dan Shaughnessy captures all the joys and heartbreaks that the curse of the Bambino has brought to Boston.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
The Boston Red Sox's loss to the New York Yankees in the final game of lastyear's playoffs has been called �the game of the century,� evidence that the rivalry between the Red Sox and the Yankees is hotter than ever. In the wake of that defeat, author and Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy has updated his bewitching story of the curse that has lain over the Red Sox since they sold Babe Ruth to the hated Yankees in 1920. Here he sheds light on classic Sox debacles—from Johnny Pesky's so- called hesitation throw, to the horrifying dribbler that slithered between Bill Buckner's legs, to last year's stunning extra-inning home run that kept the Sox without a World Championship for yet another year. Lively and filled with anecdotes, this is baseball folklore at its best. muse and writing of witchcraft, foiled heroism, and the scarlett letter B upon every Red Sox fan's breast. (Scott Booth, The National) as mythology, as drama, and as pure entertainment. (Doris Kearns Goodwin)
Author Biography: Dan Shaughnessy is a sports columnist for the Boston Globe. He is the author of numerous books on Boston's rich sports history, including Ever Green: The Story of the Boston Celtics and One Strike Away.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Boston Globe sportswriter Shaughnessy contends that the cash sale in 1920 of star Babe Ruth by his team, the Boston Red Sox, to the New York Yankees put a curse on the Beantown franchise that has prevailed for 70 years. In support of that argument, he reviews the history of the team--but with a difference. Most books about the Sox during this era may indulge in necessary masochism; Shaughnessy's is a super-deluxe masochism. He concentrates almost exclusively on end-season and post-season play, discussing in agonizing detail the team's four defeats in the World Series, its lack of success in the only two playoff games in league history, the collapse in the 1988 American League Championship Series--and all those times when the Bosox failed to lead their league or division by a single game or two. In story after story of near-triumph, the book should delight the team's most fanatically loyal followers, who will find it the verbal equivalent of a hair shirt. (June)
Publishers Weekly
Shaughnessy, author of the adult title The Curse of the Bambino and credited with coining the phrase, explores the origins of the alleged curse that kept the Boston Red Sox from winning the World Series for 86 years. "Dad, who was the greatest ballplayer who ever lived?" asks Kate, as she and her father head to the opening game against the New York Yankees at Fenway Park. "That's easy, Kate... It was George Herman Ruth." Payne (The Shot Heard 'Round the World, reviewed above) portrays a ghostlike image of Babe Ruth looming over the stadium. The father continues, "Once the Babe left Boston, the Red Sox didn't win again for more than eighty years." The father then fills Kate in with details of Ruth's contributions to the 1918 Series against the Cubs, which put the Sox up three to one in the Series they ultimately won. A pleasing tall-tale quality pervades the book once Ruth is traded to the Yankees, ushering in decades of losses for Boston. The artist comically depicts the Babe tripping up his former teammates-holding onto shortstop Pesky in 1946 in St. Louis and kicking a ball between first baseman Bill Buckner's legs in New York in 1986. The final spread shows Boston's celebration of a curse-breaking victory: "But then came the magical season of 2004, when the Red Sox beat the Yankees, won the World Series, and lifted the Curse of the Bambino forever." Dad tells Kate he never did believe in the curse: "I don't think the Babe would have ever done something like that." Nevertheless, the famous hex occasions some mighty witty depictions of the Babe thwarting his former team. Ages 5-8. (Mar.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Framing his plaint as a Dad answering his daughter's question one opening day at Fenway Park, a sportswriter for the Boston Globe recaps Babe Ruth's early career as a Red Sox star and his infamous sale to the Yankees. Then he goes on to tally the succession of heartbreaking, last-minute bobbles and defeats that denied the Sox a World Series win for the next eight and a half decades. Recalling the art for his edition of Ernest L. Thayer's Casey at the Bat (2003), Payne presents a series of on-field scenes featuring many recognizable players in old-style uniforms. Over them looms The Babe, sometimes taller than Fenway's Green Monster, invisibly holding Johnny Pesky back from throwing home in the '46 Series, blowing Bucky Dent's homer over the wall in that '78 playoff game, and giving Mookie Wilson's grounder a nudge to send it trickling between Bill Buckner's legs. Curse or just coincidence? Shaughnessy declines to come down on one side or the other, and the Red Sox's win in 2004, commemorated by a spread that drops the perfunctory plotline and bears other signs of hasty construction, makes it all moot anyway. Or so Sox fans would like to think. (afterword, brief bibliography) (Picture book. 7-9)
Home
