The Curse of Donnie Baseball: Now Do You Believe It Is Real?

Warming his hands for the coldest winter

in Southern California history?

Or praying that he doesn't get fired?

The following is an update of a piece I've done before. And I will do it every year until people start believing. Probably after that, too, until he either dies, leaves baseball, or actually wins a Pennant.

Donald Arthur Mattingly of Evansville, Indiana is a reasonably intelligent man. He is, as far as I can tell, a man of sterling character. And, from 1984 to 1989, he might well have been the best baseball player on the planet.

By any measure, he is one of the most admired, and one of the most admirable, people associated with baseball in the last 35 years. He's also one of the least strange people involved in a frequently strange sport.

But he's had one of the strangest careers in baseball history. Here's a short list of some of the bizarre events for which he's been on the field, or at least in the dugout:

* July 4, 1983: Dave Righetti pitching a no-hitter on the 4th of July, ending it by striking out Wade Boggs, the most disciplined hitter of the 1980s and '90s.
* July 24, 1983: The Pine Tar Game.
* September 12, 1985: "Baseball Thursday in New York," highlighted by both New York teams playing at home and beating the teams with whom they were fighting for their respective Division titles, and lowlighted by Yankee fans booing "O, Canada." (Notice that, this time, I do not capitalize the F. On this occasions, "Yankee Fans" did not deserve it.)
* October 6, 1985: Phil Niekro, who knuckleballed his way to 299 wins, winning his 300th without throwing the knuckler until the final batter, and getting a complete-game shutout at age 46.
* October 5, 1986: Possibly getting cheated out of a batting title when Wade Boggs sits out the final series.
* June 11, 1988: Billy Martin bats Rick Rhoden, a pitcher, 7th as the designated hitter due to an injury crisis, and it works.
* July 21, 1988: The Yankees trade Jay Buhner for Ken Phelps.
* July 1, 1990: Andy Hawkins pitches a no-hitter, and loses.
* July 30, 1990: George Steinbrenner is banned from baseball for life. (He is reinstated for the 1993 season.)
* July 25, 1993: Yankees come from 8-0 down in the 2nd inning to walk off 9-8 winners.
* September 4, 1993: Jim Abbott pitches a no-hitter. With one hand.
* October 4, 1995: The Jim Leyritz Game.
* October 7, 1995: The Edgar Martinez Game.
* October 8, 1995: The day that saved baseball in the Northwest. Also Mattingly's last game as a player.
* July 1, 2004: The John Flaherty Game.
* July 24, 2004: Jason Varitek decides to have a bitch fight with Alex Rodriguez. (And remember, Mattingly wasn't there for the madness of the 2003 ALCS.)
* October 17-20, 2004: The big cheat-aided choke.
* April 14, 2005: The Gary Sheffield incident at Fenway.
* October 7, 2006: Joe Torre bats Alex Rodriguez 8th in a win-or-go-home game. Because he'd earned it. It didn't work.
* October 5, 2007: The Bug Game.
* October 15, 2008 and October 21, 2009: On hand for 2 Pennant clinchers by a Philadelphia baseball team. There haven't been many people, outside of Phillies employees and fans, who've been able to truthfully claim that since 1931.
* October 12, 2013: Clayton Kershaw starts a postseason game, allows no earned runs and only 2 hits, and loses. That had never happened before.
* October 18, 2013: Kershaw, supposedly the best pitcher in baseball, gets rocked with 4 runs in the 3rd inning and 5 in the 5th.
* October 10, 2015: The Utley-Tejada incident.
* October 15, 2015: I suppose this goes down in history as The Daniel Murphy Game.

*

Losing a postseason series to the Mets: Is that the worst?

Well, some seriously pedigreed teams have done it: The Atlanta Braves (1969), the Baltimore Orioles (1969), the Cincinnati Reds (1973 and, sort of, 1999), the Boston Red Sox (1986), the San Francisco Giants (2000), the St. Louis Cardinals (2000), and, yes, the Los Angeles Dodgers twice now (2006 and 2015). So have less-pedigreed teams: The Houston Astros (1986) and the Arizona Diamondbacks (1999).

But... The Dodgers have not won a Pennant since 1988, when they upset the Giants to win the NL Western Division, the Mets to win the NLCS, and then the Oakland Athletics to win the World Series.

From 1941 to 1988, counting all National League Pennants won by teams in whatever cities in which they've played, the Dodgers won 16 Pennants, the Cardinals 10, the Reds 5; 3 each were won by the Giants, the Mets, the Philadelphia Phillies, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the Boston/Milwaukee Braves; and 1 each by the Chicago Cubs and the San Diego Padres; while the Milwaukee Brewers won a Pennant in the American League before being switched to the National, and the Montreal Expos, forerunners of the Washington Nationals, didn't win any (and still haven't).

But in the 27 years since 1988, the year of Orel Hershiser and Kirk Gibson, National League Pennants have been won as follows: Giants 6, the Atlanta edition of the Braves 5, Phillies 3, Cardinals 3; 2 by the Florida (now Miami) Marlins, and 1 each by the Reds, Mets, Padres, Astros (now in the AL), Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies -- keeping in mind that this year's Pennant, while not yet won, won't be won by the Dodgers; and that, in 1988, the Marlins, Rockies and D-backs didn't even exist yet.  Of all teams in the NL, the only ones that have failed to win a Pennant in that time are the Cubs, Pirates, Brewers, Expos/Nationals... and Dodgers. And the Cubs could win it this time, although the Mets will try to stop them.

*

Since 2011, when he succeeded the retiring Joe Torre, himself a Yankee Legend, the Dodgers' manager has been "Yankee Legend" Don Mattingly.

I put "Yankee Legend" in quotation marks because, to be a Yankee Legend, you have to have at least won a Pennant.  This allows Bobby Murcer and Dave Winfield to qualify.

Don Mattingly is not a Yankee Legend.  He is a curse.

I have often said that I don't believe in curses, jinxes and ghosts... except when it comes to sports. I did not invent the concept of the Curse of Donnie Baseball. I am merely the prophet who brings its dark word to the nonbelievers, whether they like it or not.

As far as I know, I am the first person ever to write about it publicly. I even created a Wikipedia entry for it. I put it up in 2005, but it's long since been taken down. I guess the Wikimedia guys didn't think there was enough evidence for it. But a few scraps of it survive, cited by others who think there might be such a Curse.

There is a Cult of St. Donald Arthur of Evansville. You can go to Yankee Stadium and spew forth the vilest of imprecations at Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, even at the imperfect saint that is Thurman Munson. But say that Don Mattingly is not all that Yankee Fans claim him to be, and you will be subjected to the kind of abuse that usually only occurs, in this country without the intensity of club soccer hatreds, between college football fans during Rivalry Week.

Yankee broadcaster Michael Kay is the high priest of this cult. On a number of occasions, he has said of Mattingly, "He might be the most beloved athlete in the history of New York sports."

Kay is usually smart, but this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard a sportscaster say. Has he never heard of Babe Ruth? Lou Gehrig? Joe DiMaggio? Mickey Mantle? Yogi Berra? Bobby Murcer (who, unlike Mattingly, at least won a Pennant in Pinstripes)? Thurman Munson? Reggie Jackson? Derek Jeter? Bernie Williams? Paul O'Neill? Mariano Rivera?

And that's just on the Yankees. What about Tom Seaver? Dwight Gooden? Jackie Robinson? Duke Snider? Gil Hodges? Willie Mays? John McGraw? Christy Mathewson? Mel Ott? Buck Ewing?

And that's just from baseball. What about Frank Gifford? Lawrence Taylor? Joe Namath? Walt Frazier? Patrick Ewing? Frank Boucher? Eddie Giacomin? Rod Gilbert? Mike Bossy? Denis Potvin? Mark Messier (though it pains me to admit it)? Brian Leetch? Martin Brodeur?

Most Yankee Fans, inside or outside of the Cult of St. Donald Arthur, don't know about the Curse. Those who do know about it tend to refuse to admit that it exists, for it means that Don Mattingly, their idol while growing up in the Eighties and Nineties, is a gigantic jinx.

*

Donald Arthur Mattingly, of Evansville, Indiana, now 54 years of age, was a very talented baseball player. From 1984 to 1989, he was arguably the best player in the game. Then a back injury struck. He decided to retire after the 1995 season – well, sort of: He announced he would take 1996 off, and then decide whether to resume playing; ultimately, he decided not to.

Between the ages of 23 and 28, he was wonderful; from 29 to 34, he was a hard-working, courageous player still capable of the occasional moment of greatness. He was, and remains, respected around the game. A contemporary, Kirby Puckett, observed him taking extra batting practice, and gave him the nickname "Donnie Baseball." It seemed to fit. He was Captain of the Yankees.

At 35, he was done. That's not a tragedy, but it is unfortunate.

At 43, he returned to baseball as a coach. From then until 48, he was a postseason fixture. At 52, 53 and 54, he managed a team into the postseason.

But the record is clear: Don Mattingly is a loser, and any team that employs him is doomed to failure.

*

Facts can be interpreted any way you want, but their truths cannot be denied:

1979: The Yankees drafted Mattingly out of high school. He played for the Oneonta Yankees, in the New York-Penn League, "short season Class A." They won the Pennant.

1980: Mattingly was promoted to full season Class A, to the Greensboro Yankees of the South Atlantic League. They won the Pennant. Mattingly has never won another.

1981: The Yankees won the American League Pennant. This was their 4th Pennant, and their 5th postseason berth, in the last 6 seasons. Mattingly played the entire season for the Nashville Sounds, in the Class AA Southern League. They had won the Pennant in 1979, and would again in 1982. But not in 1981, with Mattingly.

1982: Mattingly played most of the season with the Yankees' top farm team, the Columbus Clippers, in Class AAA. They had won the last 3 International League Pennants: 1979, 1980 and 1981. But not in 1982. The Yankees called Mattingly up on September 6. He played his 1st game on September 8, a 10-5 win over the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium. Mattingly was a defensive replacement in left field, and did not bat. The Yankees finished 6th, winning only 79 games. True, they were well out of the race well before this, so the fact of Mattingly's September callup, at age 21, near the end of a wasted season, is hardly enough on which to base an indictment. But the evidence continues.

1983: Again, Mattingly began the season with the Clippers. Again, they didn't win the Pennant. He was called up to the big club for good, and had his 1st season of being more than a look-see at the end. The Yankees finished 3rd. No shame in that, as the Baltimore Orioles ran away with the AL Eastern Division and won the World Series.

1984: Mattingly won the American League batting title with a .343 average, the highest for a Yankee in 27 years. Teammate Dave Winfield was right behind him at .340. Mattingly had also become a spectacularly-fielding 1st baseman. Just as in the 1950s, when New York baseball fans debated who was the best center fielder (Mickey Mantle of the Yankees, Willie Mays of the Giants or Duke Snider of the Dodgers) or the best shortstop (Phil Rizzuto of the Yankees or Pee Wee Reese of the Dodgers), by this point, they were debating who was the best first baseman, Mattingly or Keith Hernandez of the Mets.

The Yankees finished 3rd, as the Detroit Tigers ran away with the Division and won the World Series. So far, no reason to suspect Mattingly of anything; after all, this was only his 1st full season with the team.

1985: Mattingly put together a season that earned him the AL Most Valuable Player award. The Yankees had their best season between 1981 and 1996, and their 97 wins was the most they would get between 1980 and 1998. But it wasn't enough, as the Toronto Blue Jays clinched against them on the next-to-last day of the regular season. Still no big deal: Plenty of players fall short in their 1st attempt at a real Pennant race.

1986: Mattingly set a Yankee record (which still has not been broken) with 238 hits in a season. But the Yankees finished 2nd again, 5½ games behind the hated Boston Red Sox. Finishing 2nd to the Red Sox is never a good thing. But the Yanks had a lot of pitching problems the last 2 seasons. One more good starter in either would have made a world of difference, and this would have been a very different blog entry. (The Curse of Dennis Eckersley? The Eck punishing the Dodgers for the Kirk Gibson walkoff, and that's why they haven't won a Pennant since 1988?)

1987: Mattingly had a streak of hitting home runs in 8 consecutive games, tying a major league record. He also hit 6 grand slams in the season, setting a new record. (Each of those records has since been tied, but not broken.) But the Yankees finished 4th, 9 games behind the Tigers. Can't blame Mattingly for that: The Yankees had injuries, and particularly damaging were those to Willie Randolph and, to a lesser extent, Winfield.

1988: Another terrific year for Mattingly, but the Yankees finished 5th. Fifth! And it was the Red Sox winning the Division again! True, the Yankees were only 3½ games behind in a wild race that saw the first 4 teams (Boston, Detroit, Toronto and the Milwaukee Brewers) all within 2 games.

But this was the 4th straight season in which the Yanks were close late, and didn't win. That had never happened before: Usually, the Yankees would either win the Pennant (or, from 1976 onward, the Division), or finish well behind the leaders. Of the 31 seasons in which the Yankees did not win the Pennant between their 1st Pennant in 1921 and 1984, they were still in the race in mid-September in only 7 of them. Now they'd had 4 straight close calls, and nothing to show for them.

As Darth Vader would have said if he'd been a baseball fan, "I find your lack of postseason play disturbing."

But is that fair? I looked up the stats. Before September 11 became associated with the World Trade Center attacks, that date in 1985 was the date on which Pete Rose officially broke the all-time hits record, and it was also the date in that year when the Yankees went into a nosedive that cost them the AL East title.

So I decided to look at Mattingly's stats from that date onward in the 4 seasons in question:

* 1985: 30 hits in 100 at-bats, a batting average of exactly .300, 7 home runs, 22 runs batted in.

* 1986: 40-for-98, a whopping .408, 4 homers, 19 RBIs.

* 1987: 27-for-93, .290, 6 homers, 25 RBIs.

* 1988: 27-for-87, .310, 4 homers, 11 RBIs.

Overall, in the 91 biggest games of his life to that point, Mattingly went 124-for-378, exactly .300, with 21 home runs and 77 RBIs. At a 162-game pace, 37 homers, 137 RBIs -- or, roughly, what he did throughout 1985.

It sounds like he did all he could during those stretches. (I didn't look up his fielding performance.) Still, the Yankees should have at least won the Division in at least one of those seasons, right?

1989: Another very good year for Mattingly, but the Yankees collapsed. Hardly any pitching. Winfield missed the entire season with a back injury. Another injury forced Ron Guidry to retire without appearing once this season.

The most frustrating decade in team history is over. Can Mattingly be blamed? Surely not. All the evidence seen so far is merely circumstantial. Right? Right? Well, read on:

1990, 1991, 1992: The beginning of Mattingly's Captaincy, and all awful years for the Yankees, including what remains their only last-place finish in the last 49 years. They can't see contention with binoculars. And Mattingly's injuries rendered him pretty much useless. A great career appears to have been going down in flames.

1993: As ESPN college football analyst Lee Corso would say, "Not so fast, my friend!" The rebuilt Yankees put together a fine season, and were tied for 1st with the Blue Jays on September 8. But it all fell apart again, and they finished 7 games back.

Mattingly's fault? Sure doesn't look like it: He had his best season in 5 years, in terms of both personal statistics and team finish. Yet again, it seemed like the Yankees were one starting pitcher away from a championship season. The bullpen needed some help, too. Mattingly was not the problem. Or, at least, he appeared not to be.

1994: This was the season it was all going to come together. At bat, Mattingly was partying like it's 1985. Paul O'Neill was on his way to becoming the 1st Yankee since Mattingly that year to win the batting title. Bernie Williams was coming into his own. Even the pitching had improved. On August 11, not only were they in first place by 6½ games over the Orioles, but they had the best record in the AL.

On August 12, the Major League Baseball Players Association went on strike. On September 15, with the strike still unresolved, Commissioner Bud Selig canceled the remainder of the regular season, and the postseason.

The Yankees were not the only team hurt by this: The Chicago White Sox had probably their best team in 75 years, the Cleveland Indians were in their first Pennant race in 35 years, the Texas Rangers were in first place that late in the season for the first time in their 23-year history, the Montreal Expos had the best record in baseball and a shot at their first full-season postseason berth in their 36-year history, and the Colorado Rockies, in only their second season of play, were just a game and a half behind the Dodgers for the National League West and a game behind the Houston Astros for the Wild Card. A lot of teams got screwed.

But there was a growing sense among Yankee Fans that this was Mattingly's best chance, and that he might not get another one this good. Ever.

1995: A hard season for the Yankees. The Red Sox won the Division solidly. Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's Iron Man streak record. Mickey Mantle's final illness and death hung over the team like a dark cloud. Being asked to broadcast a game rather than go to Mickey's funeral led Phil Rizzuto to retire – as it turned out, an agreement was reached, and he did one more season in '96. And the Yankees had more injuries, including Mattingly's bad back flaring up again.

But they managed to win the Wild Card, and, in the Division Series against the Seattle Mariners, Mattingly's 1st-ever postseason series in 14 years of trying, he batted .417 and hit 2 home runs, including one in Game 2 that sent the crowd at the original Yankee Stadium into an absolute frenzy. But when the Series went out to Seattle, the Mariners rode their own big crowds to come from 2 games to 0 back and win 3 straight and the series.

Mariner fans still like to brag about this series, partly because it inspired people to go to the polls next month and vote for the bond issue that funded the building of the hideous Kingdome's replacement, the much-more baseball-friendly Safeco Field; but partly because they beat the Yankees. They cling to 1995 the way rednecks cling to their guns and their religion (in that order). Mariner fans do not like to be reminded that the Yankees have since beaten them, not once, but twice, in 2000 and 2001, and in the League Championship Series, not just the Division Series.

"I have a hard time feeling bad about it," Mattingly said after the epic October 8, 1995 contest, the last in which he would ever play. A lot of Yankee Fans, however, still take this loss hard. It ensured that Don Mattingly would never play in a World Series.

And, in retrospect, it is hard to miss the parallel between Mattingly's "hard time feeling bad about it" and the resemblance to what Tom Glavine said after he bollixed up the Mets' chances in their 2007 regular season finale: "I'm disappointed, but I'm not devastated."

*

1996: Playing their 1st season without Mattingly since 1981, which was then the last season in which they won the Pennant, the Yankees win the Pennant again, and the World Series. If it wasn't for the '95 ALDS, in which Mariner 1st baseman Tino Martinez hit well and reliever Jeff Nelson pitched well, the Yankees wouldn't have sent third baseman Russ Davis and pitcher Sterling Hitchcock to the Mariners for Tino and Nellie.

And if the Yankees had won that series, they probably still would have lost to the powerful Cleveland Indians in the ALCS. And it's likely that manager Buck Showalter, who has never won a Pennant anywhere he's managed (except in the minors), would have been kept. Joe Torre would never have managed the Yankees.

Put all that together, and do you think the Yankees would have won the World Series in 1996, '98, '99 and 2000? Isn't 4 World Series wins and 6 Pennants without Donnie Baseball better than 1 World Series appearance with him? There's no way to know for sure, but do the math.

As Brian Kenny used to say on the ESPN Classic show The Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame... , Have I begun to change your mind yet? Are you now beginning to believe that larger forces are at work? Do you now see that Mattingly's presence did not help the Yankees win, and in fact hurt them?

No? You still ain't buyin' it? Okay, fine. Read on:

1997: On Opening Day, the Yankees invited Mattingly to raise the 1996 World Championship flag. On August 31, they retired his uniform Number 23, and dedicated a Plaque in his honor to rest in Yankee Stadium's Monument Park. After the dedication ceremony, the Yankees lost an Interleague game to the Montreal Expos, the team many of us suspected they would have played in the 1994 World Series if that Series had happened. The Yanks went on to finish 2nd to the Orioles, and it remained the last season in which the Yankees did not win at least the Division title until 2007.

1998: The Yankees begin a run of 5 Pennants in 6 seasons, ending with the Aaron Boone homer in the 2003 ALCS and the subsequent World Series defeat to the Florida Marlins. Through all of this, Mattingly was back home at his farm outside his home town of Evansville, and had no active role with any baseball team, and appeared at Yankee Stadium just once a season, on Old-Timers' Day. Mattingly in uniform, no; October glory, yes.

2004: Mattingly decides to get back into baseball, and is hired as the Yankees' hitting instructor. The Yankees get within 3 outs of completing an ALCS sweep of the Red Sox for the Pennant. You know how this part of the story ends: The Sox "reverse the curse," the one involving Babe Ruth, and complete the greatest comeback in the history of baseball.

Can we blame Mattingly for this? Maybe, because the Yankee lineup seemed to lose a lot of steam after the 19-8 blowout in Game 3; after that, they barely hit at all. Five runs would have won Game 4, Game 5, or Game 6; instead, they got 4, 4 and 2, respectively. Game 7 was a blowout, more a pitching issue than a hitting one. But if Mattingly was such a good choice to be a hitting instructor, then he should have been able to give somebody the advice they needed to get that 5th run home in Game 4, 5 or 6.

Can we blame steroids? We know David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez and Bronson Arroyo were steroid users: The 1st 2 got caught (though it wasn't revealed until July 30, 2009), and the last confessed. Many of us also suspect Curt Schilling, Jason Varitek, Trot Nixon, Mark Bellhorn, Bill Mueller and Kevin Millar of using them. This would seem to invalidate my Curse of Donnie Baseball theory, since it suggests that the Yankees would have won the Pennant without it, even with Mattingly in uniform.

But the fact remains that the Yankees had Mattingly in uniform, and did not win the Pennant. So, even knowing what we know now, we have to accept the fact that the Yankees did not win.

2005: The Yankees win the Division, but lose the Division Series to the Anaheim Angels. And while the pitching wasn't very good, they also didn't hit much. Remember: Mattingly was the hitting instructor.

2006: The Yankees win the Division in a landslide, but lose the Division Series to the Detroit Tigers. And while the pitching wasn't very good, the hitting was practically nonexistent. Remember: Mattingly was the hitting instructor.

2007: The Yankees don't win the Division, the Red Sox do. The Yanks do manage to gain the Wild Card, but, again, their hitting in the Division Series against the Indians is pathetic. And, remember, their hitting instructor is Don Mattingly.

Afterward, the Yankees offered Joe Torre a new contract to manage, with a pay cut, and he resigned. He was hired to manage the Dodgers, and offered to take Mattingly with him, and Mattingly accepted.

I was afraid that Mattingly would get the Yankee job, and continue the Curse. And I was afraid that he would never, ever be fired, no matter how badly he did. After all, George Steinbrenner nearly went down in history as the man who fired Yogi Berra. Hank and Hal Steinbrenner would not have wanted to go down in history as the men who fired Don Mattingly. There are some popularity contests that you just can't win. Instead, Joe Girardi was hired; and, while he's driven me crazy sometimes, he has done much better as a manager than Mattingly.

There you have it. Between 1921 (their 1st Pennant) and 1981, and again from 1996 to 2003, a total of 69 seasons, the Yankees won 39 American League Pennants, or 56 percent of the available Pennants. In the 16 seasons in which Mattingly has been in a Yankee uniform (1982 to 1995 and 2004 to 2007), the Yankees have won exactly none.

Even after the '96 World Series, the pattern did not escape my notice. And when, in 2004, their 1st season with Mattingly in uniform since 1995, they blew the Pennant so spectacularly, I began to start telling people that Mattingly was a jinx, that there is a Curse of Donnie Baseball. In the ensuing 3 seasons, it only got worse.

That's what happened when Mattingly was in a Yankee uniform. And what has happened to the Dodgers with Mattingly in uniform?

*

2008: The Dodgers won the National League Western Division, and swept the Chicago Cubs in 3 straight to win the NLDS, but got embarrassed by the Phillies in the NLCS. The Dodgers blew a 6th-inning lead in Game 1 and an 8th-inning lead in Game 4.

Rafael Furcal, with a 1.012 OPS in the regular season, dropped to .687 in the NLCS. Andre Ethier dropped from .885 to .534, future Yankee Russell Martin from .781 to .436, Blake DeWitt from .728 to .364 (a hopeless 1-for-13), and the veteran, near-Hall-of-Famer Jeff Kent from .745 to .000 – he went 0-for-8. Former Red Sox teammates Manny Ramirez and Nomar Garciaparra stepped their OPSs up, as did Matt Kemp and Juan Pierre. But the Dodgers had too many key guys stop hitting.

Should we credit the Phillies' pitching for stopping the Dodgers? Their WHIP for the series was 1.545, but with a WHIP that high, they should have had a much higher ERA than 3.89. The Dodgers had their chances, and they blew it. This was almost as bad as the 1977 and '78 NLCS were for the Phils, losing to the Dodgers in shocking, disgraceful moments. Now, just as they had done by benefiting from a September choke instead of perpetrating one, the Phils had turned the tables on the L.A. Bums.

So, Mattingly had now put a cloud over a 2nd franchise.

2009: The Dodgers won the NL West and the NLDS again, setting up another NLCS against the Phillies.  The Phils trailed the Dodgers 4-3 in the bottom of the 9th in Game 4 at Citizens Bank Park. But a walk, a hit batsman, and Jimmy Rollins' double up the gap won the game for the Fightin' Phils, 5-4. The next night, the Phils won their 7th Pennant, and their 1st-ever back-to-back Pennants.

And, oh yeah, just 2 years after not lifting a finger to stop Mattingly from leaving, the Yankees won the World Series again.

How could the Dodgers have blown this? They were 1 win away from evening the series at 2 apiece and going back to L.A. for Game 5. How? How? How?!?

Silly Dodger fans, did they not know of the Curse of Donnie Baseball? Do they know anything that is not told to them by Vin Scully, Tommy Lasorda, or Bill Plaschke in his Los Angeles Times column?

2010: The Dodgers missed the postseason. To make matters worse, their arch-rivals, the San Francisco Giants, won the World Series, their 1st since moving to the West Coast. Torre retired as a manager. Mattingly was named manager.

2011: The Dodgers won only 82 games, barely a winning season. This can't all be put on Mattingly, as the team's ownership situation was a mess: Owner Frank McCourt was going through an exceedingly messy divorce, and stripped the Dodgers' assets to fund his legal defense.

And yet, the 1st season in which Mattingly managed the Dodgers was the 1st season, and remains the only season out of a possible 55, in which the Dodgers had a lower attendance than the "crosstown" Angels.

But Earvin "Magic" Johnson, already an L.A. sports legend for what he did with the Lakers, and a man who has done more in business since leaving the court, bought the team, and did what every sports team owner should do, but most don't: He decided to spend whatever it takes to win.

Whether Magic will ultimately succeed, I don't know. But at least he's trying, whereas other team owners with his resources don't increase the payroll, don't go after the best players, and don't try to hang onto the good ones they already have.

2012: The Dodgers won 86 games, and were in the race for one of the NL's Wild Card spots the whole way. And the Giants won another World Series.

Should the Dodgers have done better? Yes. Would they have done better with a manager other than Mattingly? Maybe. But it was just the 1st full year of Magicball. Maybe they still needed time...

2013: By now, Magic's spending had given the Dodgers the highest payroll in baseball. They had also developed the highest per-game attendance in baseball. In both cases, they surpassed the Yankees.

And they didn't give up either of those distinctions in 2014 or 2015. So they should be very serious contenders for the World Series.

In spite of missing their best player, Matt Kemp, for most of the season, the Dodgers rode the bat of Yasiel Puig and the arm of Clayton Kershaw to 92 wins and the NL West title. They beat the Braves in the NLCS, and faced the Cardinals in the NLCS.

The Dodgers took a 2-0 lead in the top of the 3rd in Game 1, but the Cards tied it in the bottom half, and won 3-2 it in the 13th inning. The Dodgers got only 5 hits in Game 2, and lost 1-0 despite Kershaw allowing just 2 hits. The Dodgers won Game 3, 3-0, but lost Game 4, 4-2. They buckled down and won Game 5, 6-4, to ensure that the Cards would not clinch at Dodger Stadium – although the Cards did score 2 in the top of the 9th. And then, in Game 6, the Cards just plain blew the Dodgers out, and the Cardinals, not the Dodgers, went to the 2013 World Series.

2014: The Dodgers won the NL West again, beating the Giants out. But the Cardinals bombed Kershaw out of the yard in Game 1 of the NLDS, and came from behind against him again in Game 4 to win the series. And the arch-rival Giants, having won the Wild Card, won the World Series again!

This is getting embarrassing for the Dodgers. Throw in the Giants' success -- they had now won as many World Series in the last 5 years as the Dodgers had in the last 51 -- and it's absolutely humiliating for Dodger fans.

2015: The Dodgers won the NL West again, making this the 1st time they'd ever reached the postseason in 3 consecutive years, in either Brooklyn or Los Angeles. But the Mets beat Kershaw in Game 1 of the Division Series and Zack Greinke in Game 5, both in Los Angeles, and hung 13 runs on the Dodgers in Game 3 in New York. A truly humiliating defeat, given how much hype the Dodgers, especially the pitching of Kershaw and Greinke, had gotten.

In the bottom of the 3rd inning of Game 5 last night, Ethier popped up, threw his bat -- a worse offense than Jose Bautista's bat-flip after a home run the day before -- walked back to the dugout, and started yelling at Mattingly. Mattingly said after the game that he was just trying to calm Ethier down, so he wouldn't get thrown out of the game for popping off, and Ethier wasn't having it.

ESPN posted an interesting stat, courtesy of the venerable Elias Sports Bureau: Among managers with at least a .550 career winning percentage in regular season play, the worst postseason winning percentage belongs to Grady Little with .400. Mattingly is next-worst, at .421.

Is his job in jeopardy? Apparently not: Magic tweeted, "Thank you to @Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly, our coaching staff as well as all of our Dodgers players for a good season!" (UPDATE: He was fired anyway.)

Pedro Moura of the Orange County Register asked him after the game, "Where does this loss leave you, in terms of next year, coming back?" Mattingly said, "Seriously? You're asking me that now?"

Yes, he's seriously asking you that now. It's a valid question, Donnie. Because, clearly, the Dodgers will never win a Pennant with you as manager.

*

Ladies and Gentlemen, Children of All Ages, read ye now the indictment:

There is a Curse of Donnie Baseball. No Major League Baseball team that has had Don Mattingly in uniform, in any capacity, has ever won a Pennant, and none ever will.

One season can be written off as, "Hey, that's baseball, these things happen." Maybe even several seasons, as factors like injuries, bad trades, and problems between players and management cause teams that could win to not do so.

We now have 26 seasons of evidence for this Curse. Twenty-six years. More than a quarter of a century. With 2 different teams, in 2 different home ballparks, in 2 different cities, on 2 different coasts, in 2 different Leagues, in 4 different decades, under 4 different ownerships (counting George Steinbrenner as no longer being functionally in charge by 2007), under 10 different managers (13 if you count the rehirings of Billy Martin and Lou Piniella), including Mattingly himself.

*

Am I wrong? Am I exaggerating? Do you need further testimony? Okay, here goes: 

On October 26, 2007, while Mattingly was being considered for the managerial vacancy after Torre left, Robert A. George wrote this in the New York Post: 

Don Mattingly would be the absolute worst choice to be Yankees manager. I'm glad that Brian Cashman appears to be wavering on this. Do I base my views on any sort of great baseball knowledge? Not really -- though the fact that he has NO experience as a manager should be a factor. 

No, my objection goes to a point I made once before: Mattingly IS the "curse" of the Yankees. He is the best player the Yankees have ever had WHO NEVER WON ANYTHING. I made this point in one of my earliest RT posts. Time has proven my point even more: The Yankees haven't gotten out of the first round of the playoffs since Mattingly returned to the team as a coach. 

And, circumstantial evidence suggests that this is not just a coincidence. Aside from starting pitching problems, what differentiates the Yankees of the last four seasons ('04-'07) from their dynastic brethren of '96-'03? The answer is patient clutch pitching. Failure to get that clutch two-strike, two-out hit has doomed the Yankees in recent years. Who was the hitting coach in three of those four years. Yep, Mr. Donnie Baseball -- the man who came up to the major leagues just when the Yankees concluded a four World Series/two championships-in-six-year-run. The team wouldn't make it back to the Fall Classic until the year after Mattingly's last year. 

He returned in '04. The rest is history.

In a game where superstition accounts for quite a lot, Don Mattingly is the black cat, the broken mirror and the crack in the sidewalk all rolled into one.

Okay, it's the Post. Not exactly a beacon of truth and good journalism. But it is one of the New York Tri-State Area's major papers, behind the Times and the Daily News, but with a readership well ahead of Newsday, the Star-Ledger and the other Jersey papers, the Journal News and any other Hudson Valley paper, and the New Haven Register and any other Connecticut paper.

So someone from a major paper also takes it seriously.

Chris Suellentrop of The New York Times noticed it in the Autumn of 2007, before the Dodgers entered into it. The Gowanus Rotisserie Baseball Gazette also noticed it at that time. Baseball blogger Len Vlahos picked up on it as early as the start of the 2004 season, 6 months before the most powerful argument in favor of this curse happened. Gerlinda Grimes of How Stuff Works noticed it in 2012.

Even a Met fan blogger noticed it in 2009. And the intelligence of Met fans has been known to have a rather large range, from a few that are quite observant and express themselves well, to the flat-out dumb-as-a-post.

*

You've heard my case. The prosecution rests. The defense may call whichever witnesses it chooses.  I reserve the right to cross-examine these fools.

Do you now believe? If not, how much more proof do you need?

Call it a Curse. Call him "Donnie Regular Season Baseball." But Don Mattingly will never win a Pennant. Ever.

Not in the American League, not in the National League. Not for the Yankees, not for any other team.

Don Mattingly will never win a Pennant. Ever.

As the late, great Phillies center fielder and broadcaster Richie Ashburn would say (to his broadcast partner, Harry Kalas), "Bet your house on it, Harry."

The Curse of Kevin Mitchell: Now 28 Years

October 27, 1986: The Mets win the World Series. I was not happy about this.

They have not done so since. I am very happy about that.

After a one-day delay, the Red Sox actually seem to be shaking off the historical, hysterical Game 6 loss. They lead the Mets, 3-0 in the bottom of the 6th inning. Bruce Hurst, with an extra day’s rest, is doing just fine. The Sox have chased Ron Darling. Sid Fernandez has relieved him. The Sox are just 12 outs away from their 1st World Championship in 68 years after all.

Can they hold it? These are the Boston Red Sox, what do you think? The Mets tie it up in the 6th. The idiot McNamara brings in Calvin Schiraldi, who choked in the 10th the night before, to pitch the 7th, and Ray Knight leads off with a home run.  he Mets make it 6-3 by the inning’s end.

The Sox make it 6-5 in the top of the 8th, so there’s still hope, but then Al Nipper serves one up to Darryl Strawberry, and he hits one out, and takes a leisurely stroll around the bases, allowing NBC to run about a dozen commercials.

The Mets let reliever Jesse Orosco bat for himself, and he drives in another run, and he gets the last out by striking out Marty Barrett. Mets 8, Red Sox 5. Orosco hurls his glove high into the Flushing air.

The Mets are still looking for that 3rd World Championship. They’ve won just 1 more Pennant and just 1 more World Series game since that night. To make matters worse, following that 1 Pennant, they went on to lose to the Yankees in the World Series, one of 5 the Yankees have won since 1986.

*

What the hell happened? Well, when something goes wrong, people like to look for scapegoats. Someone frustrated with the Red Sox’ inability to win a World Series since 1918 thought he found a reason: They hadn’t won since they sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1919, and the phrase “The Curse of the Bambino” was born. The phrase was popularized by Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy, and became the title of his 1990 book about the history of that franchise.

December 11, 1986, a date which lives in Flushing infamy: The Mets sent Kevin Mitchell, Shawn Abner, Stan Jefferson, Kevin Armstrong and Kevin Brown (no, not that Kevin Brown, though he did also pitch for the Padres later) to Mitchell’s hometown, San Diego, for Kevin McReynolds, Gene Walter and Adam Ging. Forget everyone else, if you hadn't already: The keys to this trade were Mitchell and McReynolds.

McReynolds was a good player, but he was not a member of the glorious ’86 team that went all the way. When the Mets didn’t go all the way again, he became a scapegoat, and got the hell booed out of him. Fair? Of course not.

But it wouldn’t have mattered so much if Mitchell hadn’t panned out. And, as far as his hometown Padres were concerned, he didn’t: On July 5, 1987, not even at the All-Star Break of his 1st season with them, he was batting just .245 in 62 games, so they sent him, and pitchers Dave Dravecky and Craig Lefferts, up the coast to the San Francisco Giants, getting back 3rd baseman Chris Brown, reliever Mark Davis (both of whom became All-Stars but never helped the team into the Playoffs) and 2 guys you don’t need to remember. So Mitchell-for-McReynolds didn’t help the Mets or the Padres.

These two Mitchell trades, however, helped the Giants tremendously. Before the trade, they had been in San Francisco for 29 years and had reached the postseason exactly twice, the last time, 16 years earlier. In 1987, the Giants won the NL West, as Mitchell responded to the change of scenery by hitting .306 with 15 homers and 44 RBIs in just 69 games for them.

In 1988, Mitchell tailed off a little, and the Giants tailed off a lot. But in 1989, he hit 47 home runs, had 125 RBIs, put up a sick OPS+ of 192, and made one of the great catches of all time, a running barehanded catch in St. Louis -- off the bat of defensive "Wizard" Ozzie Smith, no less -- that almost sent him barreling into the stands. Not since the salad days of Willie Mays had the Giants seen that kind of outfield defense.

He won the NL’s Most Valuable Player award, and helped the Giants win only their 2nd Pennant in 35 years, while the Mets finished 2nd in the NL East for the 5th of 6 times in a span of 8 years – the others being the ’86 crown and the ’88 Division title.

Problems with his weight and other disciplinary issues led to Mitchell being traded several times. But he did help the Cincinnati Reds into 1st place in the NL Central Division when the Strike of ’94 hit, and still had an OPS+ of 138 as late as 1996. But he played his last big-league game in 1998 at age 36, and after bouncing around the independent minors, including stints in New Jersey with the Newark Bears and Atlantic City Surf, he called it a career. Sort of: At 52, he is back in his native San Diego, playing in an “adult baseball league” (no, no porn stars involved – that I know of), and won a title with his team in 2009.

Mitchell had an adolescence connected to gangs in San Diego. He has been arrested for assault twice since his last major league game, although on neither occasion did the case go to trial. He was once listed as a tax delinquent to the tune of over $5 million. And then there's the shocking story that Dwight Gooden told, in his first memoir, of an act of animal cruelty -- a story which Doc, in his new memoir, now admits that he made up.

I don't know Kevin Mitchell. For all I know, these things were all blown out of proportion and he's really a good guy. For all I know, it could all be true, and he's one of those people who should be avoided at all costs.

But it seems silly to suggest that he was angry about being traded by the Mets so soon after winning the Series, certainly not so angry that he would place a “curse” on them. After all, he went to his home town, the team he grew up rooting for. They soon traded him, but that worked out really well for him. Perhaps not in terms of team success, but in terms of fame and fortune, getting away from the Mets was the best thing that could have happened to him.

(Mitchell, in a recent photo.)

Still, the fact remains that the Mets won a World Series, and were expected to win more; then, just 45 days after they won said Series, they traded Mitchell away, and they haven’t won one since.

Are the Mets cursed? Or have they just been hit with a quarter-century-long combination of good competition and their own incompetence -- on the field, in the dugout, and in the boardroom?

Other teams have waited a longer. Some, a lot longer. Some of those teams have had bizarre moments and crashes-and-burns that suggest being cursed. Some haven't, and have just... not... gotten it done.

The Mets?

* Chokes in 1988, ’98, ’99, 2006, ’07 and ’08.

* Near-misses, aside from those, in 1987, ’89, ’90 and 2001.

* Injury-riddled seasons, aside from those, in 1995, ’96, ’97, 2002, ’09, '10 and '11.

* The Madoffization of the Wilpons' finances in 2008, from which the club is still suffering.

* And losses to teams they considered rivals in ’87 and ’06 (Cardinals), ’89 (Cubs), ’98 and ’99 (Braves), ’00 (Yankees), and now ’07 and ’08 (Phillies). That’s... 18 out of 25 seasons with possible “Curse Material.”

The Curse of Kevin Mitchell? Do you believe?

Met fans like to use the old line of 1965-74 relief pitcher Tug McGraw: YA GOTTA BELIEVE!

I’d rather believe in the curse on the Mets than believe in the Mets themselves.

*

October 27, 1275: This is the traditional founding day of the city of Amsterdam, the capital and artistic center of The Netherlands. Home of lax laws regarding prostitution and drug use, Heineken and Amstel Light beers, and the mighty Amsterdamsche Football Club (AFC) Ajax (pronounced “EYE-ax”), founders of “Total Football,” which has given the world Johan Cruijff (sometimes spelled “Cruyff”), Johan Neeskens, Marco van Basten, Frank Rijkaard, Louis van Gaal, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and Arsenal stars Dennis Bergkamp, Marc Overmars, Nwankwo Kanu and Thomas Vermaelen.

October 27, 1682: This is the known-for-sure founding day of the city of Philadelphia. Home of American independence, Benjamin Franklin, the former Pennsylvania Railroad, the cheesesteak sandwich, the Number 8 pretzel, real-life heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier, cinematic heavyweight champ Rocky Balboa, 7 World Series Championships (5 by the Athletics from 1910 to 1930, and the Phillies in 1980 and 2008), the NFL’s Eagles (Champions 1948, '49 and '60 but apparently cursed ever since), the NBA’s 76ers (Champions 1967 and '83, as the now-Golden State Warriors were in 1947 and '56), the NHL’s Flyers (Stanley Cup winners in 1974 and '75 but another long drought), and the basketball-playing “Big 5” colleges: The University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, St. Joseph’s University, La Salle University and Villanova University.

October 27, 1858: Theodore Roosevelt is born at 28 East 20th Street in the Gramercy Park section of Manhattan. Over a century and a half later, he remains the only President to have been born in New York City – although others have, at some point or another, lived in the City: Washington, both Adamses, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Grant, Arthur, Cleveland, Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Obama. (Eisenhower was, for a time, president of Columbia University, and Obama was a student there. So was Monroe, at a time when it was still called King's College)

TR was a member of the boxing team at Harvard University. (Yes, colleges once had boxing teams, even the Ivies.) He loved tennis, although, knowing it was considered an elitist sport, refused to allow the press to photograph him while he played. (He warned his handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, not to let them take his picture while he played golf, another sport then considered elitist, but Taft didn’t listen to him.)

Seeing a newspaper photo of a bloodied Swarthmore College player, Robert “Tiny” Maxwell, in 1905, TR called in the top football officials of the time, and told them to do something about the violence in the game, or he would act. Not knowing how far he would go, fearing he might pass a law banning the game, in 1906 they formed what became the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and passed rule changes including the forward pass.

Had he ordered football shut down, that might have given soccer its best chance to succeed in America until the current boom. But he didn't.

October 27, 1866: In Philadelphia‚ the Unions of Morrisania‚ with future Cincinnati Red Stockings star George Wright playing shortstop‚ upset the Athletics‚ 42-29. In other words, in late October, a baseball team from The Bronx pounds a team from Philadelphia.

This Philadelphia Athletics had no connection to the later American League team of the same name, which now plays in Oakland.

*

October 27, 1904, 110 years ago: The first Subway line opens in New York. It runs from City Hall to Grand Central Station (roughly today’s 4, 5 and 6 trains), then turns onto 42nd Street (today’s S, or Times Square-Grand Central Shuttle), then up Broadway to 207th Street (today’s 1 train) before making one final curve into the Bronx to Bailey Street (this part is part of today’s A train).

The Polo Grounds of the time, and its 1911 successor, were served by the 155th Street station that opened on this day; it is supposedly on this line in 1908 that Jack Norworth, a songwriter, saw a sign saying, “Baseball To-Day, Polo Grounds,” inspiring him to write the lyrics to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

It would be 1918 before “34th St.-Penn Station” opened to service the 1910-built Pennsylvania Station, and the successor station and the “new” Madison Square Garden built on the site. The 34th Street station on the 8th Avenue side of Penn Station opened in 1932, as did the 42nd Street station that serves the Port Authority Bus Terminal that opened in 1950, and the 50th Street station that served the old Garden from 1932 until its closing in 1968.

The current 4 train station at 161st Street and River Avenue opened in 1917, and began serving Yankee Stadium at its opening in 1923; the D train station there opened in 1933, probably to coincide with the opening of the nearby Bronx County Courthouse. The Prospect Park station now used by the Q train became part of the City Subway in 1920, and was used to get to games at Ebbets Field.

The station now served by the 7 train opened in 1939 for the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair, well predating the 1964-65 World’s Fair and the opening of Shea Stadium and the National Tennis Center. It was named “Willets Point Blvd.” from 1939 to 1964 and “Willets Point-Shea Stadium” from 1964 to 2008, and has been renamed “Mets-Willets Point,” as the MTA did not want to use the name “Citi Field” due to CitiGroup’s role in the 2008 financial crisis.

October 27, 1918: Muriel Teresa Wright is born in Manhattan. Dropping her first name, Teresa Wright played Eleanor Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees. She died in 2005, the last surviving major castmember of the film.

*

October 27, 1922: Ralph McPherran Kiner is born in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. He grew up in Alhambra, California, outside Los Angeles. From 1946 to 1952, he led the National League in home runs every year, twice topping 50 homers in a season.

He was a one-dimensional player, but he was the best the Pittsburgh Pirates had. But the team wasn’t doing well, on the field or at the gate, and team president Branch Rickey said, “We finished last with you, and we can finish last without you,” meaning, "We can finish last without having to pay your salary," and sold him to the Chicago Cubs.

A back injury ended his career in 1955, after only 10 seasons. But in those 10 seasons, he hit 369 home runs. If it had been 20 years, double that, and it becomes 738 home runs – not as many as Hank Aaron and the cheating Barry Bonds ended up with, but more than the man who held the record then, Babe Ruth. Hall-of-Famer Warren Spahn said, “Ralph Kiner can wipe out your lead with one swing.”

Kiner allegedly said, “Home run hitters drive Cadillacs, singles hitters drive Fords.” That line has also been attributed to Luke Appling, but he probably didn’t say it, since he was a singles hitter (albeit one of the best ever).

Kiner went into broadcasting, and joined the staff of the expansion New York Mets in 1962. His postgame show Kiner’s Korner did so much to teach a generation of us about the game. But Ralph’s broadcasting, well, had its moments. Remembering early Met Marv Thronberry and ’73 Met George Theodore, he called Darryl Strawberry “Darryl Throneberry” and “George Strawberry.” He said, “Darryl Strawberry has been voted into the Hall of Fame five times in a row” – he meant the All-Star Team. He called Gary Carter “Gary Cooper.” He called himself “Ralph Korner” many times.

He once called his broadcasting partner “Tim McArthur.” At the end of the game, Tim McCarver said, “Well, Ralph, Douglas MacArthur said, ‘Chance favors the prepared mind, and the Mets obviously weren’t prepared tonight.’” Kiner said, ‘He also said, ‘I shall return,’ and so will we, right after these messages.”

Then there was, “Today is Father’s Day, so for all you dads out there, Happy Birthday.” Like Herb Score in Cleveland and Jerry Coleman in San Diego, he is sometimes cited as having said, “He slides into second with a standup double.” But he definitely said, “Kevin McReynolds stops at third, and he scores.” Like Phil Rizzuto across town with the Yankees, he frequently called home runs that ended up off the wall or caught.

My favorite Kinerism is when he cued up an ad for Manufacturer’s Hanover, a bank now owned by CitiGroup, by saying, “We’ll be right back, after this message from Manufacturer’s Hangover.”

He blamed his malaprops on hanging around Casey Stengel and Yogi Berra so much in the Mets’ early days. But when he did call a home run correctly, it was with a variation on the classic theme: “That ball is going, it is going, it is gone, goodbye!” And he paid one of the great tributes to a player, when he cited the fielding of the Phillies’ 1970s center fielder: “Two-thirds of the Earth is covered by water. The other third is covered by Garry Maddox.”

A bout with Bell’s palsy a few years back left him with a noticeable speech impediment, and as he reached the age of 80, his workdays were cut back, but he still does Met games on Friday nights. As the Mets’ radio booth is named for Bob Murphy, their TV booth is named for Kiner. The Pirates retired his Number 4, the Mets elected him to their team Hall of Fame, and he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He died earlier this year at age 91, and, deservedly so, one of the game's most revered figures.

October 27, 1924, 90 years ago: Ruby Ann Wallace is born in Cleveland. Known professionally as Ruby Dee, she played Rachel Robinson in The Jackie Robinson Story, while Jackie played himself. It’s a little weird that two actresses (Ruby and Teresa Wright) who played wives of Baseball Hall-of-Famers, in films only 8 years apart, would have the same birthday.

Dee was married to Ossie Davis, who, among his own many acting achievements, did many of the voiceovers, including some concerning Jackie, for Ken Burns’ Baseball miniseries. Until her death earlier this year, Ruby lived in New Rochelle, New York, only 18 miles from Rachel Robinson in Stamford, Connecticut.

*

October 27, 1932: Harry Gregg is born in Magherafelt, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. A soccer goalkeeper, he played 5 years for Doncaster Rovers before being sold to Manchester United before the 1957-58 season.

He was on the plane that crashed and killed 20 of its 44 passengers, including 8 United teammates, in a snowstorm in Munich, Germany on the way back from a European Cup match against Red Star Belgrade in Yugoslavia (now Serbia). He pulled teammates Bobby Charlton, Jackie Blanchflower and Dennis Viollet, and manager Matt Busby, from the wreckage, probably saving their lives.

The Munich Air Disaster is blamed for short-circuiting United's great team of the 1950s, and (considerably less fairly) for preventing England from winning the 1958 and 1962 World Cups.  Gregg played for Northern Ireland in 1958 and was voted the outstanding goalkeeper of the tournament. But injuries prevented him from playing in United's 1963 FA Cup Final win, and from getting enough appearances to qualify for league championship medals when United won in 1965 and '67.

He later managed 4 different League teams, and is now retired from active service in the game. He and Sir Bobby Charlton are the only players who were on the plane who are still alive, 56 years later. The other people on board who are still alive are: Stewardess Rosemary Cheverton; Eleanor Miklos, wife of a travel agent who was killed; Nebojša Bato Tomašević, a Yugoslavian diplomat; and 2, technically 3, others who were saved by Gregg: Passenger Vera Lukić, her baby daughter Vesna, and her unborn child, who became her son Zoran. (An urban legend had it that her unborn son grew up to be 1980s Arsenal goalkeeper John Lukic, an Englishman of Serbian descent, but this is not the case.)

October 27, 1939, 75 years ago: John Marwood Cleese is born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, in the West Country of England. The Monty Python performer is not an athlete? You try doing “Silly Walks” sometime. He’s also narrated and starred in a documentary explaining soccer in a humourous vein. (You were expecting something completely different?) While Somerset currently has no soccer team in the top flight, he is a fan of the East London club West Ham United. (I had previously believed he was a fan of West London's Chelsea, but this was an error.)

*

October 27, 1945: Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva is born. President of Brazil from 2003 to 2010, “Lula” is largely responsible for the South American nation being one of the few countries that has thrived in the 2007-current global slowdown, and spearheaded the movement to get Brazil to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

October 27, 1949: Marcel Cerdan is killed. The French boxer, once the welterweight champion of Europe, won the middleweight championship of the world by knocking out Tony Zale at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, but lost it in his 1st defense, against Jake LaMotta at Briggs Stadium (later renamed Tiger Stadium) in Detroit, as he had to drop out of the fight due to a dislocated shoulder.

He was flying from Paris to New York to prepare for his rematch with “the Raging Bull” when his plane crashed in the Azores. He was only 33. His career record was an amazing 113-4, although it should be noted that nearly all his fights were against Europeans, not exactly the best of competition.

In 1983, Marcel Cerdan Jr. played his father in the French film Edith et Marcel, which told of the affair Cerdan Sr. had with the legendary French singer Edith Piaf, played by Evelyn Bouix. In 2007, Jean-Pierre Martins played him opposite Marion Cotillard in her Oscar-winning role as Piaf in La Vie en Rose.

October 27, 1954, 60 years ago: The divorce of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe is certified in San Francisco. Apparently, Joe wanted Marilyn to stay home and be a good little Italian wife -- even though, with a birth name of Norma Jeane Mortensen, Marilyn was of Scandinavian descent. And she wanted to keep acting. Supposedly, the last straw was the skirt-billow over the subway grate scene filmed for The Seven Year Itch.

It's been alleged that Joe hit her on occasion. Even if that despicable possibility is true, in 1961 he got her out of a psychiatric institution to which she'd been committed. And, with rumors abounding that they might remarry, after she died in 1962, he organized her funeral and kept all the Hollywood leeches out.

For 20 years, he had roses sent to her grave every day, until he found out they were being stolen by tourists and local kids. He seemed never to have gotten over her. Nor have we all: Even in the first verse of "We Didn't Start the Fire" and the spoken-word part of "Vogue," respectively, Billy Joel and Madonna rhymed their names.

To paraphrase Elton John, I would've liked to have known her, but I wasn't born yet -- her candle may have burned out, but the world never will forget.

October 27, 1955: Clark Griffith dies at the age of 85. “The Old Fox” would probably have been elected to the Hall of Fame strictly on his pitching with the Chicago White Stockings (forerunners of the Cubs), but he also managed the Chicago White Sox to the first American League Pennant in 1901, and nearly managed the New York Highlanders (forerunners of the Yankees) to the Pennant in 1904 – in each case, while still an All-Star quality pitcher -- or he would have been considered such, had there been All-Star Games back then. He managed the Washington Senators, and was still pitching for them at age 45 in 1914.

He bought the Senators in 1919, and their home, National Park, was renamed Griffith Stadium. However, in a play on the phrase describing George Washington, a comedian named Charley Dryden called them, “Washington: First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.”

With Walter Johnson pitching, and 26-year-old “boy manager” and second baseman Bucky Harris leading the way, the Senators finally won a World Series in 1924 and another Pennant in 1925. With yet another “boy manager,” shortstop Joe Cronin – who married Griffith’s adopted daughter, Mildred Robertson – they won the Pennant again in 1933. But that was it: They finished 1 game out in 1945, and no Washington team has ever come close again.

Griffith’s nephew and adopted son, Calvin Griffith, took over, and in 1959 publicly said he would never move the Senators. Of course, he did, just a year later. A monument to Griffith stood outside Griffith Stadium, and was moved first to Robert F. Kennedy Stadium and then to Nationals Park. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in the Pioneers & Executives category.

October 27, 1957: Glenn Hoddle is born in the Hillingdon section of West London. The midfielder starred for North London soccer team Tottenham Hotspur, leading them to the FA Cup in 1981 and 1982, and the UEFA Cup in 1984. He also helped AS Monaco, which is located outside of France but is a member of France’s Ligue 1, to the 1988 Ligue 1 title and the 1991 Coupe de France. At the time, their manager was Arsene Wenger, who went on to manage Spurs’ North London arch-rivals, Arsenal. Hoddle last played as a player-manager for the West London club Chelsea in 1995.

Wenger has said, “His control was superb, and he had perfect body balance. His skill in both feet was uncanny... I couldn't understand why he hadn't been appreciated in England. Perhaps he was a star in the wrong period, years ahead of his time.”

Others have appreciated him, calling him the best English player of his generation. But that may just be because Tottenham are a classically "English" team -- while Arsenal, long having had stars who were Scottish and later Irish, and more recently French, Dutch and African, are a "foreign team" and thus unworthy of standing up to "English" clubs like Tottenham, Chelsea, West Ham and the Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester and North-East clubs.

Hoddle's status as a player made the English want to like him as a manager, but in that capacity he was a joke. He got Chelsea to the FA Cup Final in 1994, and Tottenham to the 2002 League Cup Final, but he was unable to consummate the hype and lead either of his former clubs to glory. In between, he managed the England national team to an ignominious crash out of the 1998 World Cup at the first knockout round, and his evangelism, his reliance on (not an affair with) "faith healer" Eileen Drury, and his remarks that the disabled were "being punished for sins in a former life" -- which would seem to conflict with the tenets of Christianity -- led to his sacking. He also failed as manager of Southampton, Swindon Town and Wolverhampton Wanderers, his last managing job, in 2006.

In 2008 he established a soccer academy, not in his native England but in Spain. He said he had received 26 management offers since then but has had to turn them all down "until the academy is able to run itself." But this past year, he joined the staff of another whacked-out London football personality, Harry Redknapp, at West London club Queens Park Rangers.

Tony Cascarino, a former Chelsea teammate, has said Hoddle was "completely besotted with himself. If he had been an ice cream, he would have licked himself."

*

October 27, 1960: Trying to jump ahead of the National League‚ the American League admits Los Angeles and Minneapolis to the League, with plans to have the new clubs begin competition in 1961 in the new 10-team league.

At the same time, Calvin Griffith is given permission to move the existing Washington Senators franchise to Minneapolis/St. Paul‚ the “Twin Cities,” where he will settle the “Minnesota Twins” at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, on the Minneapolis side of the Mississippi River but equidistant from the downtowns of both cities. An expansion team is given the Washington Senators name. (Coincidentally, the new Senators will be moved in 1972, to an existing and greatly-expanded minor-league park at point halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth, and take the name of the State instead of that of a city: The Texas Rangers.)

AL President Joe Cronin says the AL will play a 162-game schedule‚ with 18 games against each opponent. The NL will balk‚ saying the two expansions are not analogous and that the AL was not invited to move into L.A.

Also on this day, Thomas Andrew Nieto is born in Downey, California. A backup catcher, Tom Nieto played in the World Series for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1985 and lost. He was not listed on the World Series roster for the Minnesota Twins, but he did play for them in 1987 and won a World Series ring for them that way. He served as a coach for both New York teams. He managed the Twins’ Triple-A team, the Rochester Red Wings (a longtime Baltimore Orioles affiliate), and now manages the Yankees' affiliate in the Gulf Coast League, the bottom of minor league baseball.

October 27, 1965: Catcher Bob Uecker‚ 1st baseman Bill White and shortstop Dick Groat are traded by the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies for pitcher Art Mahaffey‚ outfielder Alex Johnson‚ and catcher Pat Corrales.

In his 1st at-bat for the Phils against the Cards, White has to hit the deck, as a pitch from his former roommate, Bob Gibson, comes perilously close to his head. White would later say that Gibson’s message was clear: “We’re not teammates anymore.”

Uecker, as has been his custom, found humor in the trade: “I was pulled over by the police. I was fined $400. It was $100 for drunk driving, and $300 for being with the Phillies.” You don’t think that’s funny? Well, that’s because the Phillies aren’t a joke anymore.

*

October 27, 1972: Brad William Radke is born in Eau Claire, in a part of Wisconsin that tilts toward Minneapolis rather than Milwaukee.  Somewhat appropriately, he pitched his entire 12-year career for the Twins, and was a member of their Playoff teams of 2002, ’03, ’04 and ’06. He won 148 games in the majors, and has been elected to the Twins’ Hall of Fame.

October 27, 1973: Jason Michael Johnson is born in Santa Barbara, California. The pitcher has had some terrible luck: He was a member of the original 1998 Tampa Bay Devil Rays; he was traded away by the Detroit Tigers (2005-06) and the Cleveland Indians (2006-07) the seasons before each reached their next Playoff berths; he played for the Boston Red Sox in 2006, the one season between 2002 and 2010 that they did not make the Playoffs; he pitched for the Los Angeles Dodgers in their NL Western Division Championship season of 2008 but did not appear in the Playoffs; and was injured throughout 2009, resulting in his release by the Yankees.

All this would be bad enough, but he is also a diabetic, and he was the 1st MLB player to receive permission to wear an insulin pump on the field during games.

October 27, 1978: Sergei Viktorovich Samsonov is born in Moscow. A longtime left wing for the Boston Bruins, he came very close to winning the Stanley Cup in 2006, when his Edmonton Oilers fell to the Carolina Hurricanes in 7 games.  Although he has not played since 2011, he has not officially retired. At 36, he could come back.

*

October 27, 1984, 30 years ago: Brayden Tyler Quinn is born in Dublin, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. Though with a name like Brady Quinn and coming from a town named Dublin, it's not surprising that the quarterback spurned Ohio State for Notre Dame, the Fighting Irish. An All-American, he is now a color commentator for The NFL on Fox, having been released by the Miami Dolphins during the preseason for this year's NFL season.

Also on this day, Kelly Michelle Lee Osbourne is born in the Westminster section of London. The singer and actress (who is probably not partially named for actress Michelle Lee) is not actively involved in sports in any way, but her father, a singer of some renown, is a native of Birmingham, England, and a big fan of that city's Aston Villa F.C. But her brother Jack roots for arch-rival Birmingham City F.C.

It's also been joked that Ozzy is an "expert batsman," although this has nothing to do with either baseball or cricket.

October 27, 1985: The Kansas City Royals rout the St. Louis Cardinals 11-0 in Game 7, to win their 1st World Championship, and the 1st All-Missouri World Series since the Cardinals-Browns matchup of 1944. They become only the 6th team to rally from a 3-1 deficit and win the Series (and remain the last to do so). Series MVP Bret Saberhagen pitches the shutout while Cardinals ace John Tudor allows 5 runs in 2 1/3 innings.

The Cards are still upset over the blown call that cost them Game 6 – 29 years later, they and their fans still are – and allowed it to affect their performances and their minds for Game 7. After being lifted from the game‚ Tudor punches an electric fan in the clubhouse and severely cuts his hand. Fellow 20-game winner Joaquin Andujar is ejected for arguing balls and strikes during Kansas City's 6-run 5th inning, screaming at Don Denkinger, who blew the call at first base the night before and is now behind the plate. The Cardinals finish the WS with a .185 team batting average‚ lowest ever for a 7-game Series.

Are the Royals cursed? They never won another Pennant until this season -- never even made the postseason again. At this writing, they are down 3 games to 2 in the 2014 World Series. Can they win Games 6 and 7 at home? They did it in 1985, but this is not 1985.

Also on this day, Billy Martin is fired by the Yankees for an unprecedented 4th time (not counting all those firings in 1977 that didn’t take), and is replaced by former Yankee outfielder Lou Piniella‚ who had been the team's hitting instructor since retiring as a player in 1984.

October 27, 1989, 25 years ago: After a 10-day delay following the Loma Prieta Earthquake, the World Series resumes at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Rescue workers from both sides of San Francisco Bay, San Francisco and Oakland, throw out ceremonial first balls.

The title song from the 1936 musical film San Francisco, about the 1906 quake ("San Francisco, open your Golden Gate... ") is sung on the field by the cast of a San Francisco-based drag-queen stage show, Beach Blanket Babylon, and in the stands by 60,000 people. After the events of the last 10 days, suddenly no one has the energy to make bigoted or silly remarks about gay people, drag queens and people dealing, directly or otherwise, with AIDS.

Game 3 begins, but it is over nearly as quickly as it was 10 days earlier, as the Oakland Athletics, hit 5 home runs, to beat the San Francisco Giants, 13-7. The A’s can wrap it up tomorrow.

*

October 27, 1991: The Minnesota Twins become World Champions with a 1-0 victory in 10 innings over the Atlanta Braves, behind Jack Morris's masterful pitching. Gene Larkin's single off Alejandro Pena scores Dan Gladden with the game's only run.

The game is the 1st Game 7 to go into extra innings since the Senators-Giants Series in 1924. Morris is named the Series MVP for the Twins‚ who win all 4 games in the Metrodome while losing all 3 in Atlanta -- repeating their pattern against St. Louis in 1987. Four of the 7 games are decided on the final pitch‚ while 5 are decided by a single run‚ and 3 in extra innings. All are Series records. Morris's 10-inning masterpiece is the last extra-inning complete game of the century.

Through the 2014 season, the Twins’ record in World Series play is 11-10: 11-1 at home (3-1 at Metropolitan Stadium in ’65, 4-0 at the Metrodome in ’87 and again in ’91, and they have yet to get that far at Target Field) and 0-9 on the road. However, since that day 23 years ago, they have never won another Pennant. The Braves have, although once in the World Series, they've rarely been better off.

October 27, 1999: The Yankees defeat the Braves‚ 4-1‚ to win their 25th World Championship. Roger Clemens gets the win‚ hurling 4-hit ball before leaving the game in the 8th inning, to finally get his first World Series ring, 13 years after his only previous appearance, with the ill-fated '86 Red Sox. Mariano Rivera gets the save‚ his 2nd of the Series. Jim Leyritz hits a solo homer in the 8th, the last home run, and the last run, in baseball in the 20th Century. The last out is Keith Lockhart flying out to left field, where the ball is caught by Game 3’s hero, Chad Curtis. Rivera wins the Series MVP award.

Four years earlier, as the final out was registered of the 1995 World Series, NBC's Bob Costas called the Braves "The Team of the Nineties." That label made sense at the time. Going into this Series, in the decade, the Braves had won 8 Division Titles and 5 Pennants, but just that 1 World Series; the Yankees had won 3 Division Titles (4 counting the strike-shortened 1994), 3 Pennants and 2 World Series.

This Series decided it, and in indisputable fashion, as the Yanks were now 2-0 over the Braves in Series play in the decade. This time, after the final out, Costas says it right: “The New York Yankees. World Champions. Team of the Decade. Most successful franchise of the Century.”

*

October 27, 2001: Game 1 of the World Series, the 1st ever played in the Mountain Time Zone. The Arizona Diamondbacks pound the Yankees by a score of 9-1 behind Curt Schilling, who hurls 7 innings to win his 4th game of the postseason. Craig Counsell and Luis Gonzalez (cough-steroids-cough) homer for Arizona as Mike Mussina takes the loss for New York.

October 27, 2002: The Angels win their first World Series in 42 years of play – under any name -- as they defeat the San Francisco Giants‚ 4-1‚ in Game 7. John Lackey gets the Series-clinching win, making him the 1st rookie to win Game 7 of a World Series since Babe Adams of the 1909 Pirates. (My, how times have changed.)

Garret Anderson's bases-loaded double in the 3rd inning scores 3 runs for Anaheim. Troy Glaus is named Series MVP. The Giants had a 5-0 lead in Game 6, and were up 5-3 and just 9 outs away from winning the Series, but they blew it.

Soon, people begin to wonder if the Giants are a “cursed team.” The Curse of Horace Stoneham? The Curse of Captain Eddie (Grant)? The Curse of Candlestick? The Kurse of Krukow? Who knows. And, now that the Giants finally have won 2 World Series as a San Francisco team (and are in great position to win a 3rd), who cares?

This is the 21st World Series to be played between two teams of the same State, the 7th from a State other than New York, and the 4th from California. In each case, it remains, through 2014, the last.

October 27, 2003: The Red Sox announce that manager Grady Little's contract will not be renewed for 2004. They also say it has nothing to do with Little's decision to stay with Pedro Martinez in Game 7 of the ALCS. Readers of Jim Bouton’s book Ball Four have the right words for this: “Yeah, surrrre!”

Sox fans come up with a rather cruel joke: “What do Grady Little and Don Zimmer have in common? Neither could take out Pedro.”

October 27, 2004, 10 years ago: The Curse of the Bambino is finally broken. Well, sort of. The Boston Red Sox win their 1st World Series in 86 years with a 3-0 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Memorial Stadium.

Derek Lowe ends up as the winning pitcher in all 3 postseason series-clinchers for the Sox, the first pitcher of any team to do so. (Andy Pettitte became the second in 2009.) Johnny Damon hits a home run for Boston. Manny Ramirez is voted Series MVP‚ as he leads Boston to the 4-game sweep with a .412 BA and 4 RBI.

Some people had joked that the Red Sox winning the World Series would be a sign of the Apocalypse. Well, according to the Bible, one such sign is the Moon turning blood red -- and, in fact, there was a full lunar eclipse during the game. (Although this was hardly a surprise, as newspapers and news networks had mentioned it before nightfall.)

A sign held aloft at the victory parade in Boston sums it all up: “Our (late) parents and g’parents thank you.” So many people said, “We wanted them to win it in our lifetime, just once.” Well, as Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe said in the following weeks, “There was no spike in the obits. We checked. All those people who said they couldn’t die until the Red Sox won a World Series decided to live a little longer.”

Of course, they didn’t win it just once in those people’s lifetimes – except for those who died between October ’04 and October ’07. And now that we know that the Red Sox are a bunch of lying, cheating, dirty, low-down, no-good motherfuckers, we can tell the truth: They still haven’t really won a World Series since 1918*. The Curse lives.

So all those Sox fans who weren’t old enough to suffer through Harry Frazee, Johnny Pesky, Harry Agganis, Tony Conigliaro, Larry Barnett, Bobby Sprowl, Bucky Dent, John McNamara and Bill Buckner – though most of them did get through what Nomar, Pedro and Grady put them through – and showed more bastardry in victory than their forebears ever showed in defeat can kiss my 27 rings (well, 7 in my lifetime – for the moment), and then they can kiss my Pinstriped ass.

Now, where was I?

Oh yeah. Also on this day, Paulo Sergio Oliveira da Silva dies. Better known as Serginho, the Brazilian played for São Caetano as a defender, and was playing for his team in a Campeonato Brasileiro match against São Paulo when he suffered a fatal cardiac arrest 60 minutes into the match.

A later autopsy showed Serginho's heart to weigh 600 grams, twice the size of an average human heart, causing mystery towards his real cause of death. He had just turned 30, and his team was defending league champions. His son Raymundo followed in his father's footsteps and also played in the Brazilian league.

October 27, 2006: The St. Louis Cardinals defeat the Detroit Tigers, 4-2, to take the 2006 World Series. Jeff Weaver – Jeff Fucking Weaver? Are you kidding me?!? – gets the win for St. Louis, who get a pair of RBIs from Series MVP (and former Trenton Thunder shortstop) David Eckstein. Sean Casey homers for Detroit.

After the 2004 Series, when the Cardinals lost to the Red Sox, Cardinal fans began to speculate about a Curse of Keith Hernandez. Hernandez had helped the Cards win the 1982 Series, but manager-GM Whitey Herzog didn’t like him and traded him to the Mets in 1983. After this, the Cards reached but lost the Series in ’85 (on the Don Denkinger blown call and their Game 7 11-0 meltdown) and ’87, blew a 3-games-to-1 lead in the ’96 NLCS, reached the Playoffs in 2000 and ’02 but failed to win the Pennant, and looked awful in losing the ’04 Series. Someone brought up pitcher Jeff Suppan’s baserunning blunder in ’04, and noted that he wore Number 37, Hernandez’s number in ’82.

But this win, in the Cardinals’ 1st season at the 3rd Busch Stadium, their 10th title, 2nd all-time behind the Yankees and 1st among NL teams, erases any possibility of a curse on them. It should be noted that the Cards' 83 regular-season wins are the fewest of any team to win a World Series in a full 162-game, or even 154-game, season.

Also on this day, Joe Niekro dies. The longtime knuckleballer, and brother of knuckleballing Hall-of-Famer Phil Niekro, had pitched in the postseason for the Houston Astros in 1980 and ’81, and finally got his ring with the ’87 Twins. He won 221 games, joining with Phil to become the winningest brothers in baseball history. On May 29, 1976, he hit his only big-league home run, off Phil. He died of a brain aneurysm at age 61.

His son Lance Niekro pitched for the San Francisco Giants, and is now the head coach at Florida Southern College in Lakeland.

October 27, 2007: In the 1st World Series game ever played in the State of Colorado, Daisuke Matsuzaka becomes the 1st Japanese starting pitcher in World Series history, allowing 2 runs on 3 hits in 5.1 innings, to get the win against the Rockies in the 10-5 Red Sox Game 3 victory. (Hideki Irabu was on the Yankees' World Series roster in 1998 and '99, but did not start. Hideo Nomo never appeared in a World Series.)

After paying $51.1 million for the rights simply to negotiate with the right-hander, Boston obtained "Dice-K" from the Seibu Lions, signing the World Baseball Classic MVP to a 6-year deal worth $52 million. With where the Sox have been since, especially with Dice-K missing so many games due to injury, how does the deal look now? Pretty good, since he did help them win a World Series. (Well, as far as I know, he isn't one of the steroid freaks that helped the Sox cheat their way to said victory -- but with all of those injuries, you could wonder.)

October 27, 2008: Game 5 of the World Series begins at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. But it doesn't end on this night, and I don't mean because it ends after midnight tonight. Unless you mean well after midnight tonight.

The Phillies take a 2-0 lead in the 1st inning when Shane Victorino knocks in Jayson Werth and Chase Utley. Tampa Bay cuts the lead in the top of the 4th, as Carlos Peña doubles and scores on Evan Longoria's single. The Rays then tie the game in the top of the 6th when B. J. Upton scores from second base on a Peña single.

But it had already been raining all game, and as the Phillies get out of the inning, the umpires suspend the game. After the game was suspended, umpiring crew chief Tim Tschida told reporters that he and his crew ordered the players off the field because the wind and rain threatened to make the game "comical." The Phils’ Chase Utley agreed, saying that by the middle of 6th inning, "the infield was basically underwater."

Under normal conditions, games are considered to be official games after 5 innings, or 4 1/2 if the home team is leading at that point. However, postseason games are operated by the Commissioner's Office, thus are subject to the Commissioner's discretion of how to handle the scheduling of the games.

So, with rain for the rest of the night in the forecast for Philadelphia, and remembering the fuss made when, due to entirely different circumstances, he had declared the 2002 All-Star Game a tie after 11 innings, Commissioner Bud Selig informed both teams’ management before the game began that a team would not be allowed to clinch the Series in a rain-shortened game.

This was the 1st game in World Series history to be suspended. There had been 3 tied games in the history of the World Series: 1907, 1912, and 1922, all of them called due to darkness, as artificial lighting had not yet been brought to ballparks. (Not until 1949 would lights be used on a dark day for a Series game, and not until 1971 would a Series game start at night.) In general, no ties would be needed under modern rules, which provide for suspension of a tied game and resumption of it at the next possible date. Weather has caused numerous delays and postponements in Series history (notable postponements beforehand coming in 1911, 1962, 1975, 1986, 1996 and 2006), but never any suspended games before 2008.

Rain continues to fall in Philadelphia on Tuesday, further postponing the game to Wednesday, October 29, when the Phils finish it off.

October 27, 2011: Game 6 of the World Series. In 1986, the Red Sox had a 2-run lead in the 10th inning of Game 6, and were 1 strike away from winning their 1st World Series in 68 years... and blew it. Almost exactly 25 years later...

The Texas Rangers had a 2-run lead in the 9th inning of Game 6, and were 1 strike away from winning the 1st World Series in the 51 years of the franchise, 40 of them in their current location... and blew it... and then had the exact same setup in the 10th inning and blew it again! David Freese hit a game-tying triple in the 9th. He wasn't involved in the 10th inning comeback, but in the bottom of the 11th, he hit a walkoff home run, and the Cardinals won, 10-9.

If the '86 Red Sox were not officially off the hook for the biggest World Series choke ever seen to that point, thanks to the Red Sox of 2004 and '07, they were now, thanks to the Rangers having a bigger one.

October 27, 2013: As if the interference call ending last night's game wasn't weird enough, Game 4 of the World Series also has a weird ending. The Red Sox win the 1st World Series game to ever end on a pickoff, beating the Cardinals, 4-2.

Kolten Wong, a 23 year-old rookie pinch-running for Allen Craig, is caught off 1st base by Boston closer Koji Uehara, ending the Busch Stadium contest with the dangerous Carlos Beltran at the plate.