{"id":868846,"date":"2026-08-23T19:04:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T19:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/868846\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T19:04:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T19:04:20","slug":"how-the-boston-red-sox-finally-broke-the-curse-of-the-bambino-to-end-an-86-year-championship-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/868846\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Boston Red Sox finally broke the \u2018Curse of the Bambino\u2019 to end an 86-year championship drought"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Editor\u2019s note: Watch CNN Original Series \u201cDecades in Sports\u201d on the CNN app<\/a>. Across six episodes, the series explores the defining moments, athletes and cultural shifts that shaped sports over the past six decades, from the television revolution and Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, right up to the impact of social media on today\u2019s biggest stars.\n <\/p>\n

\n For generations, the Boston Red Sox had become accustomed to heartbreak.\n <\/p>\n

\n After winning the World Series in 1918, the famed franchise endured one of the most unprecedented droughts in American sports history.\n <\/p>\n

\n Game 7 losses in 1946, 1967, 1975 and 1986 made it feel as though the Sox might never get over the hump again and lift an elusive sixth Commissioner\u2019s Trophy.\n <\/p>\n

\n By 2004, that barren spell had stretched to a staggering 86 years, reinforcing the idea that Boston was somehow cursed – a notion that had become part of baseball folklore.\n <\/p>\n

\n And when the Sox fell behind 3-0 to the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series (ALCS), it looked as though history was about to repeat itself.\n <\/p>\n

\n But for a franchise that had spent decades in distress, enough was finally enough.\n <\/p>\n

\n The roots of Boston\u2019s misery stretched all the way back to 1919, when the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth \u2013 then a star pitcher and slugger who would become arguably the greatest player in baseball history \u2013 to the Yankees.\n <\/p>\n

\"While<\/p>\n

\n The Yankees then went on to become baseball\u2019s most dominant franchise – winning 27 World Series titles – while the Red Sox would not taste success for the rest of the 20th century.\n <\/p>\n

\n This gave birth to the \u201cCurse of the Bambino,\u201d the notion that Boston\u2019s decision to part ways with Ruth \u201cis the reason why the Red Sox go not only so long without winning a World Series, but losing them in such catastrophic, fateful, cursive ways,\u201d says Devin Gordon, a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine.\n <\/p>\n

\n After Bill Buckner\u2019s infamous error in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series \u2013 with the Sox leading the New York Mets 3-2 in the series and 5-3 in the 10th inning with two outs \u2013 it felt as though this cursed team from New England was just destined to always fall short.\n <\/p>\n

\n As CNN Contributor Bob Costas says in the series, \u201cThe story of the Red Sox is heartache\u2026 so close, yet so far,\u201d and even 2003, Boston\u2019s gut-wrenching loss to the Yankees in Game 7 of the ALCS showed the \u201cCurse of the Bambino\u201d had followed the Sox into the new millennium.\n <\/p>\n

\n So when the two franchises met in the ALCS a year later, it seemed almost inevitable that the Red Sox would come up short again, because as Joe Posnanski \u2013 author of Why We Love Baseball \u2013 highlights, \u201chopelessness was probably at a high.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"Ramirez<\/p>\n

\n And for good reason, as New York won the first three games to take a commanding 3-0 lead, and as NBC Sports broadcaster Kenny Albert recalls, \u201cin Game 3 it\u2019s not even close, the Yankees score 19 runs (and) they had just demolished the Red Sox.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI\u2019m a columnist for the Boston Globe, and I destroy these guys in print,\u201d says former Globe columnist Jackie MacMullan. \u201cTheir nickname was \u2018the idiots,\u2019 and I was like, \u2018yeah, they\u2019re idiots alright.\u2019\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Game 4 looked certain to be the one where the Sox\u2019 dreams would be crushed by the Yankees once again, as they entered the ninth inning 4-3 down and just three outs away from elimination.\n <\/p>\n

\n But then Boston sent Dave Roberts to first base as a pinch runner, and waiting for him on the mound was Mariano Rivera, arguably the greatest closer in baseball history.\n <\/p>\n

\"Dave<\/p>\n

\n Everyone in Yankee Stadium \u2013 including Rivera himself – knew Roberts was going to steal, and as Gordon highlights, \u201cit\u2019s very, very hard to steal a base of a pitcher whose one pitch is a 95 mph fastball\u2026 which is exactly what happened.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Roberts somehow slid safely into second, and in retrospect, it represented the first crack in the Yankees\u2019 seemingly impenetrable grip on the series.\n <\/p>\n

\n As Posnanski highlights, \u201cIt\u2019s not like Dave Roberts\u2019 steal changed anything that was obvious, but looking back on it, you realised it changed everything.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Bill Mueller then drove Roberts home with a game-tying single, before David Ortiz delivered the decisive blow with a walk-off home run in the 12th inning.\n <\/p>\n

\"David<\/p>\n

\n The Red Sox then won Game 5 in extra innings, went into Yankee Stadium and won Game 6, then returned home for Game 7 and completed the greatest comeback in MLB postseason history, and \u201cit\u2019s pandemonium in Boston like you\u2019ve never seen,\u201d says Gordon.\n <\/p>\n

\n The Red Sox had come back from the depths of despair, then swept aside the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series to end their 86-year championship drought.\n <\/p>\n

\n And as Posnanski highlights in the series, \u201cit was so perfect because Red Sox fans had built all of this scar tissue around their hearts, and the greatest gift of all that Red Sox team gave them is that once they got to the World Series, they just won, and there was never any pressure that they wouldn\u2019t.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n After all those years, the curse had finally been broken, and a franchise once defined by failure suddenly became one of baseball\u2019s great modern success stories.\n <\/p>\n

\n Boston lifted the Commissioner\u2019s Trophy again in 2007, 2013 and 2018, with the Sox\u2019s four World Series titles being the most of any MLB franchise this century.\n <\/p>\n

\n It was one of the greatest turnarounds in American sports history, and it all started with one game – and stolen base – in 2004.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s note: Watch CNN Original Series \u201cDecades in Sports\u201d on the CNN app. Across six episodes, the series…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":868847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-868846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}