“Baseball is known for superstitious players and cursed teams—and at the root of every curse there’s a story. Boston’s curse was to trade Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Cubs fans claim a billy goat is responsible for their futility. And Cleveland’s curse? The club struggled after its Pennant-winning 1954 season, but it was rich with optimism just two years later as an onslaught of new talent promised to lift the club once more to the ranks of baseball’s elite—and by 1959 the club was contending for the Pennant again. And then GM Frank Lane traded Rocky Colavito to the Detroit Tigers and cursed everything.”

“General manager Frank Lane made his mark on the club by making several unpopular or unsuccessful trades. Among the guys he traded to other teams are Rocky Colavito, Roger Maris, Norm Cash, and … manager Joe Gordon? Uh, yes. Lane and Detroit GM Bill DeWitt traded managers—Joe Gordon for Jimmy Dykes. Lane’s tenure ended shortly thereafter, long before the damage he caused.”

“If there are any curses left in baseball, they are all on the north side of Chicago.”

“Seemingly every year at least one of the league’s top sluggers can be found in Boston’s lineup—and often times more than one. David Ortiz was second or third in slugging five consecutive seasons from 2003-07. Manny Ramirez was in the top five in slugging six consecutive seasons from 2001-06. Manny and Big Papi were one-two in slugging in 2004, and from 2003-06 Boston’s big bats gave the club two of the league’s top five sluggers—something no other team in the league could boast.”

“Very few who manage a big league club are successful, fewer still are the ones who experience success over an extended period of time, but to achieve a level of success so extraordinary that it is given a category all it’s own—“The Big Red Machine”—places Sparky [Anderson] in one of the most exclusive and elite clubs in baseball history.”

“Big Papi placed among the top five in Most Valuable Player balloting during his first five seasons with the Red Sox. His best finish in that span was second place in 2005, just losing out to Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees. It was A-Rod, however, who suggested he’d gladly trade his hardware for the ring Ortiz won in 2004. A-Rod got the hardware for MVP again in 2007, but it was Ortiz who got another ring.”

“It was like the baseball gods were showing off just for him, in honor of his first day of big league baseball. And surely the baseball gods were smiling that day, because the next batter was Larry Brown, and he was a scrawny, scrappy 23-year-old kid who’d never hit a big league home run. And yet he stepped to the plate and became just the second player in baseball history to connect and give his team four consecutive home runs.”