Baseball curses. Essentially, a catch all phrase that attempts to explain the long running futility of the Sox and Cubbies. The two curses are slightly different. The Chicago one is less well known, and stems from some story of a fan who won a contest in the 40s or something for free tickets to a Cubs game. He wanted to bring his pet donkey to the game with him, but the team wouldn't let him, so he declared that the Cubs would never win the world series again or something. Since then, there have beem some incidents of a black cat before big games, and things like that.

The Sox suffer from the curse of the Bambino. Babe Ruth, he of Yankee fame, was originally a Red Sox pitcher, where he was the best pitcher and hitter in the league. However, the owner of the Red Sox, strapped for cash because of some failing Broadway productions, sold Ruth to the Yankees for a small sum of cash. As Boston sportswriters tell it, this began the downward spiral for all. The Red Sox never won the world series since (last time was with Ruth in 1918) and Ruth himself went from a happy go lucky young man, to an overweight drunkard who had serious problems with authority in New York. Unlike the Cubs though, the Red Sox have come tantalizingly close to winning the world series, most especially in 1986 where I believe they were 1 out away before the pitcher threw a wild pitch and then Bill Buckner bungled a routine ground ball through his legs at first base. Curse perhaps?