The Boston Red Sox have a rich and storied history as one of the original charter teams in Major League Baseball, which includes being the first team to win a World Series, and also a team that had one of the longest championship droughts due to a legendary curse.
Babe Ruth is thought of as one of the greatest players of all time and spent six seasons in a Red Sox uniform. But after setting the record for single season home runs in 1919, he was sold to the dreaded New York Yankees, along with a number of fellow Sox team-mates later on, which resulted in the Yankees becoming a championship contender while the Sox's fortunes were much leaner for a number of years.
Many die-hard fans blamed this on "the curse of the Bambino", and through the years there were a number of incidents that made even cynics question that it was true. Although the Red Sox again reached respectability when they added another legendary player to their ranks in the form of Ted Williams, even he could not bring a World Series Championship back to bean town, although he came pretty close in 1946.
After Williams retired, his replacement was none other than Carl Yastrzemski, who developed into one of the best hitters in the game. He led the BoSox to the 1967 World Series after earning the Triple Crown of RBI leader, home run leader, and best batting average for the season. Unfortunately for Boston, the curse was not going to end for nearly 20 more years as the St. Louis Cardinals won that championship in seven games, even though other notable players of the "Yaz" included Fred Lynn and Carlton Fisk.
Perhaps no greater proof of the "curse" occurred during the 1986 World Series between the Red Sox and New York Mets. Boston had a number of greats on a team stacked with names like Roger Clemens, Wade Boggs, Don Baylor, Jim Rice, and Dave Henderson, and appeared destined to finally win their first championship since the Babe Ruth trade. But in a tragedy of errors that culminated in a error committed by Bill Buckner, Red Sox fans around the world shook their collective heads in the knowledge that their team again suffered through this unrelenting curse.
But this jinx would finally be smashed thanks to a Boston team that included some of the best players to ever wear a Red Sox jersey, most notably Manny Ramirez and Curt Shilling, who were instrumental in Boston defeating the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2004 World Series.