Yankees: Red Sox are just begging to start ‘Curse of Mookie Betts’

At this point, the Red Sox are asking for Mookie Betts to curse them. Don’t hate it, Yankees fans.

Just in case the drunken hooligan who chucked a full can of beer at the 2018 Red Sox World Series trophy and dented it didn’t get the job done, Boston appears to be asking for more help to get another curse going this century. As a fan of the New York Yankees, I applaud their efforts.

Since the end of ’18, the Red Sox have willingly (and unnecessarily) morphed into a small-market team, kickstarting a rebuild no one asked for by offloading irreplaceable outfielder Mookie Betts for salary cap relief despite there being — say it with me! — no salary cap in baseball.

Many things have gone wrong for this team since the end of ’18. They lost their manager to a different team’s cheating scandal (on the surface), lost their ace to surgery, and canned the executive who delivered a World Series simply for fulfilling that promise at too high a cost.

And now the Sox themselves appear to be egging on the Gods that govern this game. Just look at what they tweeted and deleted after resetting the luxury tax penalty when the calendar hit Sept. 1.

Oh, IK. I very much K.

Yes, that really is the social media account bragging about ownership ditching everyone’s favorite player to save pocket change during a pandemic. They’re asking fans to smash that retweet button and brag about being miserly.

Mookie Betts is gathering up his lightning bolts and asking for Babe Ruth’s mailing address as we speak.

It was already a humorous enough coincidence that, just over a century ago, the Red Sox won a title in ’18 and had somehow jettisoned the icon who brought them there to save cash just over a year later. 1918, remember? Once upon a time, it was a chant reviled in New England, and enjoyed in the shaking Yankee Stadium bleachers. Then, as if they’d never even heard of Dan Shaughnessy, they replicated the behavior to a tee in 2020. The Red Sox just…did it all again, Icarus-style, with arguably a better baseball player.

And by flaunting it like this, the city with the greatest karma in sports history since 2000 is basically tickling Mookie’s chin and daring him to unleash hell.

The Red Sox became the all-caps RED SOX beginning in 2003 because they looked their tradition of folding and behaving meekly in the eye and said, “Nah. We’re not doing that anymore.” Their unbridled brashness and big-swinging attitude meant they were never out of any game. They turned Fenway Park into a mystique generator akin to the Old Yankee Stadium, keeping their fanbase engaged and enraged. They became the bully.

Now, they’re retreating boldly into their past and snuggling up into a blanket of their old-fashioned failures, expecting the fans to change their expectations entirely and come along with them.

No can do. If Betts wanted to curse the Red Sox the same way the Bambino apparently did, it seems he’d be fulfilling their request instead of inconveniencing ownership at all.

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