Editorial in Norwood News May 31 - June 13, 2007

(Click the title to read it at Norwood News' site)

Know The Macombs Dam Curse?

Everyone knows about the Curse of the Bambino – the legend that holds that the Boston Red Sox went 86 years without winning the World Series because they had sold the great Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920. The Yankees, of course, went on to become the greatest franchise in sports history.

But did the Sox throw off their curse onto their pinstriped archrivals?

A precursor of such a curse may have reared its head in the team’s championship drought of the 1980s. In the late 1970s, the team promised money to help fix up the neighborhood in return for a rehab for the House That Ruth Built. The Yanks got their rehab. But the community got shut out. Was the team’s bad luck in the 1980s a warning to the Boss not to dis’ the Bronx again?

Now, the Yankees are in the basement of the American League East, despite the highest payroll in baseball. What gives?

Might it be the fact that the richest team in sports appropriated a large public park for its new stadium and parking garage, while leaving neighborhood kids — and adults —without a convenient place to run, play ball and just plain recreate?

(Yes, a replacement track is complete and park projects are on the drawing board, but they are a long walk from the affected community, a fact obviously unimportant to the Yankees and the political leaders who enabled their land grab.)

Maybe the destruction of Macombs Dam Park (and part of Mullally Park) are just too serious of an infraction for the baseball gods to ignore.