Pick a Curse, Any Curse
While we’re not entirely sure that Yankee fans truly believe in curses (save for the one that befell the rival Red Sox for 86 years), we will break down some possibilities that may be keeping the Yanks from hoisting the World Series trophy.
In the afterglow of the 2000 World Series, Joe Torre’s Yankees would undergo some personnel changes. Future poster boys for performance-enhancing-drug fiascoes, Jason Grimsley and Jose Canseco, were sent to pasture. Performance-inhibiting drug user Doc Gooden would end his meteoric career in a mop-up reliever role, throwing in two then-meaningless blowout losses. While he was re-signed for 2001, he came into Spring Training looking and playing like a zombie and was quickly cut from the roster.
Worth noting is that the Yankee organization gave up on Wily Mo Pena during this offseason. The Dominican Slugger was signed to a Major League contract which unfortunately hindered his development as a player. The Yanks organization did not have a place for him at the Major League level, and he was unceremoniously shipped off to Cincinnati in exchange for Drew Henson and Michael Coleman. Had this personnel blunder been handled better, the Yankees could potentially have developed a formidable masher.
On a slightly more positive note, there were some fresh faces added to the Yankee organization. Infield prospect Robinson Cano was signed as an Amateur Free Agent. Arm-smasher Shelley Duncan was picked up in the Amateur draft. Members of mind-boggling long list of ‘07 starters, Chase Wright and Philip Humber were also drafted.
Any of these players’ coming or going could easily be attributed to a curse. You never know what Philip Humber may have done to anger the baseball gods. However, we have carefully elected one specific player who brings with him a potential curse 100 years in the making. Mr. Mike Mussina.
Mike Mussina isn’t a bad person. At times in his career he’s been quite dominant. Neither of those things are the reason he is cursing the Yanks. It was the team he came from that brought it on. The Baltimore Orioles.
The origins of the Yankees and Orioles are connected. The team that is currently the New York Yankees actually originated as the Baltimore Orioles in the 1890’s. Ned Hanlon’s O’s dominated the early era National League. Unfortunately for the Orioles, money led to the team being victimized twice by the city of New York. In 1899, Ned Hanlon took the most talented players on the Baltimore squad up North to form the Brooklyn Dodgers. Only four years later, the remainder of the franchise would relocate to NY to become the Highlanders and eventually the Yankees.
Major League level baseball did not return to Baltimore until the fifties, although Baltimore’s minor league teams would produce considerable talent (most notably future Yankee Babe Ruth). After beating the O’s on the way to the 1996 series, the 2001 Yankees signed away their ace in Mike Mussina. This was obviously the straw that broke the camel’s back. The gods of baseball must have decided to punish the Yanks for their century of raiding stars from Baltimore.
Either that, or the Yankees have had issues with having enough starting pitching and or managing that starting pitching. That could be it as well.
A big “meh” to curses. You can trace the Yankees downfall back to Stinbrenner deciding to get involved in the decision making again and instead of continuing to cultivate homegown talent and supplementing that with character guys, which brought them 4 world titles, they went back to the spending frenzy days, handing out massive contracts to guys that can’t carry a team or handle the pressures of postseason baseball.