The beauty of most sports is that it allows the hardest-working, most talented people and teams to rise to the top. The rules are designed so that everyone has a fair chance of winning, and the team that performs better usually ends up victorious. Of course luck can play a role in determining one’s outcome, but the law of averages gives us the comfort that in the end, things will even out. There’s a sense of order to it.
But what if it doesn’t even out? What if a team keeps getting unlucky? What if a city is unable to produce a winning franchise for half a century and counting? Are these just random acts of misfortune, or are there otherworldly forces at play, keeping certain teams, cities, and players from ever tasting victory? As we look through the years, it becomes very clear that curses in sports truly do exist.
No talk of sports curses can begin without mentioning the Chicago Cubs. This baseball team hasn’t won a World Series since 1908, six years before the start of the First World War (so don’t worry, Maple Leafs fans, life could always be worse). From 1908 until 1945 the Cubs won the National League a total of eight times, but no World Series.
However, in 1945 things got really spooky. Chicago Cubs fan Billy Sianis brought his goat to game four of the World Series versus the Detroit Tigers. For some strange reason, the fans sitting around Sianis didn’t like the goat, which led to the Wrigley Field staff kicking Sianis and his goat out. As he was leaving, Sianis said “Them Cubs, they ain’t gonna win no more”; since then, the Cubs have yet to even appear in a World Series, thus creating what is known as the “Billy Goat Curse”.
Sometimes it’s not just teams that are cursed, but entire cities. The best example of this is good ol’ Cleveland. Though this town might border a Great Lake, its teams are anything but great. The three major league teams in Cleveland are the Browns (NFL), the Cavaliers (NBA), and the Indians (MLB). The last of these teams to win a national trophy was the Browns, who won the NFL Championship in 1964. Since then, it’s been 51 years of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. When even LeBron James can’t win you a title, you know that the city you live in has been hexed by the sports gods.
Finally, one of the oddest sports curses is brought to us by Sports Illustrated. It’s the dream of any athlete in the world to feature on the cover of this illustrious magazine; however, many of these sporting figures end up facing frightening fates in their futures. Eddie Mathews, an Atlanta Braves third baseman, was the first ever cover athlete for Sports Illustrated in 1954. After he appeared, the Braves had a nine-game winning streak end, and not long after that Mathews broke his hand.
More recently, Serena Williams was on the cover of SI when they did a story on her potentially winning her first calendar Slam. She ended up losing to unseeded Roberta Vinci in the semi-finals of the US Open, two games away from completing this feat.
Let’s hope for our sake that no Canucks players end up on the cover this season.
In 2001, 2003, and 2015, the New York Lizards won the Major League Lacrosse championship. Every time the Lizards win the championship, a New York-area baseball team advances to the World Series, only to lose the series.