A post for Spooky Season
Baseball history is riddled with curses. The most famous, of course, is the Curse of the Bambino, which supposedly prevented the Red Sox from winning the World Series between 1918 and 2004, karma for trading away the greatest player of all time for cash. You will find other curses throughout baseball history, some more famous (Billy Goats, Black Sox) than others. A couple of other baseball curses you may not know about:
- Some Clevelanders think they haven’t won the World Series since 1948 because they traded Rocky Colavito for Harvey Kuenn in 1960. Yes, that Harvey Kuenn. Colavito: good player. Not Babe Ruth.
- A group of angry New York Giants fans supposedly placed a hex on the club when they moved to San Francisco in 1957. They did not win a World Series until 2010.
- The Hanshin Tigers of NPB in Japan think they are cursed by Colonel Sanders. Yes, that Colonel Sanders.
Talk of curses in Milwaukee Brewers fandom is not new. A well-known recent curse is referred to by those in the know as the Curse of Prince Fielder. Generally, that curse is such that the Brewers haven’t had a reliable, long-term first baseman since Fielder left in free agency after the 2011 season. More specifically, there were actually 11 straight years where the team didn’t have the same first baseman start the most games in consecutive years. Check out the list of the Brewers first baseman who played the most games in the years after Fielder’s departure (these are some names, everybody):
- 2012: Corey Hart (149g, 120 OPS+, 1.8 WAR)
- 2013: Juan Francisco (89g, 99 OPS+, -0.7 WAR)
- 2014: Mark Reynolds (130g, 87 OPS+, 0.1 WAR)
- 2015: Adam Lind (149g, 123 OPS+, 3.6 WAR)
- 2016: Chris Carter (160g, 113 OPS+, 0.9 WAR, led the NL in homers)
- 2017: Eric Thames (138g, 125 OPS+, 1.0 WAR)
- 2018: Jesús Aguilar (149g, 135 OPS+, 3.4 WAR)
- 2019: Eric Thames (149g, 117 OPS+, 1.4 WAR)
- 2020: Justin Smoak (33g, 69 OPS+, -0.5 WAR)
- 2021: Daniel Vogelbach (93g, 99 OPS+, -0.1 WAR)
- 2022: Rowdy Tellez (153g, 113 OPS+, 0.7 WAR)
The part of the curse in which there were no consecutive repeaters ended in 2023, when Tellez again led the team in appearances at first base, but he certainly didn’t have that job on lockdown (79 OPS+, -0.6 WAR in 105 games). Rhys Hoskins played at a cursed level in 2024 (131g, 98 OPS+, -0.3 WAR), and chances are good that he’ll again lead the team in appearances in 2025.
There are a couple good years in there—Lind in 2015 actually led the team in WAR (yikes), and Aguilar was a beloved presence and an All-Star in 2018. But even with the repeat seasons from Tellez and Hoskins, talk of the Curse of Fielder will not abate until the Brewers find someone who competently plays the position for multiple years.
But the curse that is most on Brewers fans’ minds in 2024 is what I heard Eric Balkman of The Score in Appleton refer to as the “Reverse Curse.” Until 2024, every single team that the Milwaukee Brewers lost to in the postseason throughout their entire history at least made it to the World Series. A quick rundown:
- In their first postseason appearance in 1981, the Brewers lost the ALDS 3-2 to the Yankees, who lost in the World Series to the Dodgers.
- The Brewers, of course, won their only pennant in 1982, but lost to the Cardinals in the World Series.
- Milwaukee lost the 2008 NLDS to the Phillies, who defeated the Rays in the World Series.
- The Brewers lost to the Cardinals in the 2011 NLCS. St. Louis defeated the Rangers in the World Series.
- The Brewers lost to the Dodgers in the 2018 NLCS; L.A. subsequently lost to Boston in the World Series.
- The Brewers lost the 2019 NL Wild Card Game to the Nationals, who defeated the Astros in the World Series.
- The Brewers lost in the 2020 Wild Card round to the Dodgers, who beat the Rays in the World Series.
- The Brewers lost the 2021 NLDS to the Atlanta, who defeated Houston in the World Series.
- The Brewers lost the 2023 Wild Card round to Arizona, who lost to Texas in the World Series.
That’s a crazy run: from their inception in 1969 through the 2023 season, the Brewers played in nine postseasons and won zero World Series. Their opponents appeared in all nine World Series and won six of them. It should be noted that every postseason the Brewers have played in except for one came in a year with the Division Series, so there were at least three playoff rounds in all of those years aside from 1982. The Reverse Curse!
If you’ve been paying attention to postseason baseball this year (and it’s entirely understandable if you have not been), you will have noted that the Reverse Curse as we understand it has reached its conclusion. The Brewers were eliminated in the Wild Card round in excruciating fashion by the New York Mets. The Mets then defeated the favored Phillies in the Division Series, and it looked like the curse was alive and well. But New York faltered against the Dodgers in the Championship Series and lost. This year’s Mets are the first team ever to defeat the Brewers in the postseason and not make it to the World Series.
Maybe breaking the curse necessitated a loss in as heartbreaking of a fashion as one could possibly imagine. And maybe you should just borrow whichever preferred messianic cliché from the fantasy world (The One, Azor Ahai, Lisan al Gaib, etc. etc.) for Jackson Chourio, who nearly beat the Mets by himself.
No matter what happened to lay this curse upon the Brewers, it appears that one half of it is now broken. Maybe this Halloween you can ask your witch and warlock friends to lift the part of the curse that makes the Brewers lose in the playoffs every year!