NEW YORK — In a surprising move that finally removed the “Curse of the Bambino” from the heads of Boston’s baseball franchise and its long-suffering fans, Major League Baseball today declared the Red Sox winners of the 2004 World Series, in recognition of their domination of the New York Yankees in April.

Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig made the announcement at a hastily arranged news conference Tuesday. He said he was taking the unprecedented step of ending the regular season five months early, skipping two rounds of postseason playoffs and canceling the Fall Classic, due to Boston’s 6-1 April record against their greatest nemeses, and in an attempt to acknowledge the inevitable.

“First of all, when a team does this well against its chief rival in April, and especially when it’s Boston, common sense tells you that the rest of the season is going to look very much the same,” Selig said. “It’s really kind of ludicrous to suggest that the Yankees were going to scrape together some kind of miracle comeback over their remaining 130-odd games and win the (American League) Eastern Division.”

Selig admitted that an A.L. East champion Red Sox club also theoretically could have faced elimination in the postseason by an A.L. wild-card Yankees club, or even from a variety of other teams, but he brushed those suggestions aside.

“Look, to postulate that there would have been some kind of wild, cruel, soul-crushing collapse by this Boston team, whether in September or October … that they’d somehow let a big lead slip away in the last weeks of the season or the late innings of a playoff game … well, that just defies probability.”

Under intense questioning, Selig revealed another reason for his decision.
“We were made aware that many Red Sox fans had already begun celebrating this championship as early as that Saturday evening, you know, after that extra-inning game they won against the Yankees in the Bronx,” he said. “There just would have been too many difficulties involved in rolling that back—‘de-celebrating,’ if you will—had the Red Sox eventually failed to win it all on their own.”

Later this week, the grounds crew at Boston’s Fenway Park will be permitted to paint the official 2004 World Series logo onto the grass at the historic ballpark and leave it in place for 24 hours, to allow for commemorative photographs.

Among stunned members of the Yankees organization, who had just flown to Oakland to begin a West Coast swing, reaction was swift.

“Sure, you’re disappointed,” said shortstop and team captain Derek Jeter. “I mean, we just won six straight games, and moved up to only one game behind the Red Sox … Mr. Steinbrenner expects …I (inaudible) …We just … Mr. Torre …”

Alone in a corner of the Yankees clubhouse, center fielder Bernie Williams strummed gently on a guitar.

“I think it’s probably better to play the games,” he said quietly. “In the town where I grew up, we always have warm weather before we have the champion.”

Yankees principal owner George Steinbrenner, in a written statement faxed to news agencies, said yesterday, “My players are my warriors, and we will fight on.” He said General Manager Brian Cashman would spend the summer attempting to secure the services of Boston slugger Manny Ramirez and star pitcher Pedro Martinez as New York’s first- and third-base foul-ball retrievers, “bringing them into the Yankee family in a capacity appropriate to their temperaments.”

But in Massachusetts, jubilant Red Sox players hailed the end of the epic drought that began shortly after their last World Series championship in 1918, when the team sold slugger Babe Ruth to the Yankees and, many believed, called down the curse that had kept them from winning another title—until yesterday.

Martinez, whose fastball’s steadily dwindling velocity Selig also cited as guaranteeing a Hub championship, celebrated by reinstating his ban on questions from English-language reporters and extending it to the Spanish-language press as well. Later, speaking through a translator in Old Norse, Martinez said of the early World Series triumph, “I can’t believe this is really happening. It’s like some kind of fantasy.”

 

Tony Borelli is a freelance writer and a Yankees fan. He can be reached at tonythesquid (at) comcast (dot) net or in the Tier Reserved seats behind home plate.