Babe Ruth Sold To The Yankees, Beginning the Infamous "Curse of the Bambino"

While there's conflicting dates as to which point this took place in January of 1919, (some say today, some on the 3rd and so on) it lived long and hard in the minds of Boston Red Sox fan's, like this bumbling play by then former CUB Bill Buckner, and other Cub-like misfortune over the following 86 years.

And also brought the Yankees seemingly perennial success which is easily verified by their compiled stats from that point on through today, which are unrivaled by almost any organized professional sports team in World History.

That is until Boston overturned the "supposed" curse winning the World Series we all witnessed back in 2004.  Wikipedia has a good entry on this here that I took this excerpt from that's an accurate take on the infamous "Curse of the Bambino"

.....The Curse of the Bambino was a superstition cited as a reason for the failure of the Boston Red Sox baseball team to win the World Series in the 86-year period from 1918 until 2004. While some fans took the curse seriously, most used the expression in a tongue-in-cheek manner.  The curse was said to have begun after the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth, sometimes called The Bambino, to the New York Yankees in the off-season of 1919-1920.

Before that point, the Red Sox had been one of the most successful professional baseball franchises, winning the first World Series in 1903 and amassing five World Series titles. After the sale they went without a title for decades, whereas the previously lackluster Yankees became one of the most successful franchises in North American professional sports.

Talk of the curse as an ongoing phenomenon ended in 2004, when the Red Sox came back from a 0-3 best-of-seven deficit to beat the Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series and then went on to sweep the St. Louis Cardinals to win the 2004 World Series.

The curse had been such a part of Boston culture that when a road sign on the city's much-used Storrow Drive was vandalized from "Reverse Curve" to "Reverse The Curse", officials left it in place until after the Red Sox won the 2004 Series. /> The curse was said to have begun after the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth, sometimes called The Bambino, to the New York Yankeesin the off-season of 1919-1920. 

After the sale they went without a title for decades, whereas the previously lackluster Yankees became one of the most successful franchises in North American professional sports  continued

Kind of like the infamous "Curse of the Billy Goat" here in Chicago, which many die hard Cub nuts believe is responsible for the team's perennial failures that you can check out in that previous link if your not familiar with and interested in reading more about.

Meanwhile here's a great newsreel of old on the Babe's final year of life starting at Yankee stadium and his famous "farewell speech" while suffering from throat cancer

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