Take Heart
Cubs’ Fans – there is no curse – it was lifted in 1950.
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| The Daily Clintonian (Clinton, Indiana), January 5, 1951, page 7. |
As the
Chicago Cubs, owners of the best record in Major League Baseball for 2016 with
103 wins, get ready to face the Wild-Card San Francisco Giants in the first
game of the Division Series, many Cubs’ fans (and perhaps players) may be
worried about shaking the “Curse of the Billy Goat.” But take heart, Cubs’ fans, there is no
curse.
Billy Sianis
– or rather his goat – lifted the curse in September 1950. If the Cubs fold in this post-season, it may
be for the same reasons they have folded every season since 1951 – namely bad luck,
random coincidence, or (perish the thought) poor play.
The curse
arose before game four of the 1945 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and
the Detroit Tigers. An usher refused Sianis’
goat admission to Wrigley Field despite having a valid, paid ticket.
As recalled in 1976 by a reporter who had covered the event thirty years earlier:
As recalled in 1976 by a reporter who had covered the event thirty years earlier:
“They smell,” was his reason.
Whereupon Billy Goat smote the
Chicago Cubs with his legendary curse that has caused grown men to weep,
shudder and carry on stomach conniptions.
He pointed a gnarled finger and decreed that the Cubs would win no more
pennants and that the Detroit Tigers would win four straight.
The Detroit Tigers won four
straight.
The Cubs haven’t won a pennant
since.
Billy Goat sent a cryptic
three-word telegram to P. K. Wrigley: “NOW,” was is triumphant message, “who
stinks.”
Ed Hercer, Delaware County Daily Times (Chester,
Pennsylvania), July 1, 1976, page 6.
Sianis may
have been particularly bitter, since he had used his goat to taunt the Detroit Tigers
in a publicity photo of the goat, “draped in a banner reading, ‘WE GOT DETROIT’S
GOAT’”.[i]
(At the time, the expression, “Get My Goat,” did not
exclusively mean “to get someone angry”; it was also used to express the sense
of sapping someone of their will to fight, or getting them out of their game.
See my earlier post, Getting
Goats, Losing Goats, Stable Goats and Navy Goats – a History and Etymology of “Get
My Goat”.)
Jim Gallagher, the Vice President of the Cubs, explained the circumstances of the origin and lifting of the curse in a widely reported wire-service story in January 1951:
Chicago (INS) – The Chicago
Cubs are looking forward to their best baseball season in five years because
the hex of William “Billy Goat” Sianis has left them.
The curse befell the Cubs
during the 1945 World Series with the Detroit Tigers. The Chicagoans lost that series. The next year they fell to third, then sixth
in 1947. In 1948 and 1949 they were eighth.
Last season they finished seventh.
Vice President Jim Gallagher
[(of the Cubs)] explains that the trouble came to the club when Sianis
purchased two tickets to one of the World Series games. One ticket was for Sianis and the other was
for his billy goat.
But the Cubs refused to admit
the goat despite the ticket. This
angered Sianis and he shouted that the Cubs would never win another National
League pennant nor a World Series until they apologized.
Four years passed and the Cubs
went from bad to worse. Then near the
end of last year the little Chicago bar owner with a beard like a billy goat
wrote a letter to one of the city’s newspapers.
He asked:
“Why don’t owner Phil Wrigley
and Vice President Jim Gallagher of the Chicago Cubs apologize to my goat and
let their team win games again instead of staying in or near the basement?
“My goat is ready to accept
the apology and take the hex off the Cubs.”
A letter of apology came from
Wrigley to the goat in the last two weeks of September and Sianis and the goat
once again wished the Cubs good luck.
. . .
Gallagher says there is “just
no telling what might happen in 1951 without the billy goat hex.”
The
Akron Beacon Journal (Ohio), January 7, 1951, page 33 (International News
Service).
Wrigley's apology paid immediate dividends:
Wrigley's apology paid immediate dividends:
Last week, in desperation, Wrigley wrote Sianis asking him "please extend to Murphy my most sincere and abject apologies - and ask him to remove the hex."
Sianis read the letter to Murphy. Since then the Cubs - now in seventh place - have won several ball games.
Sianis read the letter to Murphy. Since then the Cubs - now in seventh place - have won several ball games.
If the Cubs
do fold in the post-season, well, they can always “Wait’ll
Next Year.”
If this
season is not enough to sate your appetite for Cubs’ successes, relive those
thrilling days of yesteryear with “Tinkers
to Evers to Chance.”
Just don’t
blame it on the goat – the curse was lifted sixty-five years ago.
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