Curses! Foiled Again. And Again.

Whether jinxed by barring a billy goat from Wrigley Field in 1945 or selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920, losers need curses. "If there's a curse, the universe has deep meaning and order," says Bill Savage, who teaches English at Northwestern. "If it's just that the [team] is bad or unlucky, it's the abyss."

Then the abyss it is. It was the Marlins, not the Billy Goats, who beat the Cubs. It was Boston manager Grady Little, not the Bambino, who inexplicably kept starter Pedro Martinez in the game when any fourth grader knew it was time to pull him. The players I interviewed last week all went to pains to nix the hex, with a Cubs corporate den master saying officially, "We're out of the goat business."

And yet "the past isn't dead, it isn't even past," as William Faulkner wrote. Sammy Sosa's denial of any extra pressure was too vehement to be believable, and Dusty Baker admitted to me that--like all baseball men--he is plenty superstitious. He never steps on the foul line on trips to the mound.

When I went late Tuesday night to the scene of the crime and inspected Seat 116, Section 102, where Bartman had evidently consumed nachos and melted cheese (American, not goat) shortly before gooing the Cubs for good, I spotted a lonely man still in his seat in the empty ballpark. He was a supervisor of the cleanup crew, a 30-year veteran of Wrigley. His words were reassuring for the fateful Game 7. But the poor man looked as if his dog had just been run over by a beer truck on Waveland Avenue. I trusted the look.

What to tell the kids about the Yankees? That overdogs with power and money deserve to win? That War Admiral should have beaten Seabiscuit? Defeat is not ennobling, but it can be instructive. The late Chicago columnist Mike Royko loved the Cubs because they reminded him that most people fail most of the time and we all end up dead. The next year he was back for extra punishment. Me too, unless they win more when I don't watch.

© 2003