We got next?

Cubs fans hope Boston's broken curse can rub off

CHICAGO (AP) -- So much for the curse of the Bambino. Could the billy goat be next?

Some long-suffering Chicago Cubs fans allowed themselves to wonder after watching the Boston Red Sox sweep the St. Louis Cardinals in four games to win the World Series for the first time since 1918.

"If they can do it, so can we," said Heather Boughey, 28, of Chicago, who rooted for Boston on Tuesday night at a bar near Wrigley Field.

But after a disappointing season that failed to meet Cubs fans' expectation of a World Series berth, not everyone was as optimistic.

"Some curses haven't been lifted," read a headline in Wednesday's Chicago Sun-Times over a columnist's story about visiting a darkened, empty Wrigley Field on Tuesday night while the Series played out elsewhere.

The Cubs and crosstown rival White Sox have waited longer than any other teams to repeat as World Series champions. The Cubs last won in 1908, and the White Sox haven't won since 1917.

Sox fans blame poor play, at least lately. But fans of the Lovable Losers claim their Cubs are cursed.

As the story goes, a local tavern owner put a hex on the team in 1945 when he wasn't allowed to bring his pet goat into Wrigley Field for a game. That was the last year the Cubs even made an appearance in the World Series.

The team's subsequent postseason struggles have reinforced the idea, like the ground ball that rolled through Leon Durham's legs in 1984 and took the Cubs' hopes to get to the World Series with it.

Just last year, with the Cubs five outs from the first World Series, fan Steve Bartman reached for a ball hit toward his front-row seat at Wrigley Field, knocking it away from left fielder Moises Alou. The Cubs then gave up eight runs to the Marlins and squandered another lead in Game 7 the next night.

Alou and most fans agreed the incident did not cause the Cubs' collapse, but it renewed talk of the curse.

Some fans believe all that could change because of Boston's win.

"It lets us know, whether or not you believe in curses, that if they are true, they can be overcome," said Dave Kunicki, who helps run a Cubs fan newsletter, The Heckler.

The curse on Boston -- which hadn't won a World Series since 1918 when they, incidentally, beat the Cubs -- dates back to 1920 when the team sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees.

Now that that curse is lifted, 76-year-old Dorothy Stott of Chicago has renewed hope that she will see the Cubs win the World Series in her lifetime.

"There's always next year," she said.

The White Sox have their own tortured history with the World Series. Eight players were accused of participating in a gambling scheme to throw the 1919 World Series and were banned from baseball for life in a saga known as the "Black Sox Scandal."

White Sox fan George Bova, 43, of suburban Elmhurst called curses "goofy" excuses and said they aren't to blame for the performance of the White Sox, who last made an appearance in the World Series in 1959.

"There were tangible reasons that our team wasn't good enough as opposed to cursed baseballs or Babe Ruth being traded. All these reasons don't wash for White Sox fans," said Bova, who runs a White Sox fan Web site. "Unlike a Cubs fan, we have never turned our losing into some sort of lovable attribute."