Lambert Wrote:

THIS SEASON Red Sox Nation faces a new dilemma: a Curse Vacuum. Last fall's World Series win killed off the storied Curse of the Bambino; that is finished, dead, over, more washed-up even than Bucky (Bleeping) Dent. Oddly, this leaves a kind of empty place in our hearts.

Yes, there's still one active National League curse; the Chicago Cubs, with their 97-year drought, have the Curse of the Goat working against them. Maybe Chicago, a Midwestern meat-packing city, was bound to hatch a farm-animal curse. But the Goat involves only one team. Here in Red Sox Nation, curses require two teams and baseball players; sure, we have our goats, but they wear uniforms.

Time for a new hex, taking the durable Bambino as a model. A good curse should involve one of the outstanding players of his era, preferably someone who moved from the Red Sox to the Yankees or at least almost signed with the Sox, then went to the Yankees. Ruth put the whammy on the Sox in absentia, leaving his curse behind. That's been done; in our new version, the star brings the hex with him. We need a dugout jinx, an albatross in batting gloves. Welcome to the Curse of A-Rod.

Some will ask, why add another curse to the Yankees? after all, they've had one since 1973, when George Steinbrenner bought the team. But Steinbrenner doesn't play, and in Boston, A-Rod is special. No one else has moved so quickly from potential savior to Most Loathed Athlete. Wearing pinstripes is his worst sin, of course, but there was that game last July when Bronson Arroyo hit him with a curveball -- that's right, a curveball -- and A-Rod got testy. Apparently Jason Varitek offered some calming words like, ''Settle down, Alex, we don't throw at .260 hitters," but A-Rod had no sense of humor about this, and a bench-clearing brawl ensued. Many feel that moment lit the fuse on the Sox' championship run. Then there was the ALCS, when A-Rod regressed to seventh grade, slapping the ball from Arroyo's glove while being tagged out. Please.

Let's assess Alex's record for whammy-worthiness. After 11 years in the major leagues, the Best Player in Baseball has never won a pennant, much less a World Series (the Bambino's gold-standard criterion). In league championship play, his teams have gone 0-3, including, of course, the Biggest Choke in Pro Sports History.

Furthermore, it has become clear that the secret to success in baseball is getting rid of A-Rod. During his seven years in Seattle (1994-2000), the Mariners played .488 ball, averaging 79 wins per season. In 2001, when A-Rod packed for Texas, $252 million richer, the Mariners promptly tied a major-league record (set by the 1906 Cubs) with 116 wins and a .716 winning percentage. With A-Rod aboard and despite his 2003 MVP year, the Texas Rangers averaged only 72 wins (.444) for the next three seasons. Soon, Alex became the first reigning MVP in baseball history to be traded. (Did the Rangers know something?) Once he left for New York, Texas surged to 89 victories in 2004, their most wins since, well, the 20th century.

Of course, all this is drastically unfair. Alex Rodriguez is a complete ballplayer and by most accounts, a nice guy. In 2001, Seattle had an MVP rookie named Ichiro Suzuki; Texas lost mostly because they lacked pitching. If baseball had a salary cap, you could argue that A-Rod's huge paychecks drain money away from building the team, but that idea is laughable in Texas and especially in New York, where the Boss's lucre flows filthily to the good, the bad, and the ugly. But curses aren't fair, logical, or reasonable. Curses are voodoo.

They may also have a moral aspect. The unforgivable sin that Red Sox owner Harry Frazee committed in 1919 was that he sold the great Babe Ruth to the Yankees for cash. Today's successor to Frazee is Steinbrenner, another owner who has little feel for the game and has done more than any other to make money its ruling force. But Rodriguez's amazing feat of winning the 2003 MVP award while playing for one of the worst teams only underlines the fact that baseball is a team game, not an individual sport, something the Yankees' owner has not yet figured out.

In Boston we take endless amusement in Steinbrenner's frantic, flailing, desperate grabs for star free agents, especially players that just beat the Yankees, and in watching him lose anyway, to the lite-payroll likes of the Minnesota Twins and Florida Marlins. A-Rod, baseball's highest-paid athlete, is right where he belongs. The Babe's curse was reversed when (thank God), he slipped away from Boston to the Bronx. Now it's New York's turn.

As another World Series is approaching which I won't be watching, I figured it might be the best time to finally tell my story. I was employed by the Yankees for five years in a small capacity. Of course, "small" is how George and company make most of their employees feel. But I did develop some bond with my co-workers, one of whom happened to be my uncle. And he too, once a proud Yankee fan, has turned into something of a Yankee hater as well.

Since the earliest years of Yankee Stadium, the team had employed red-capped ushers to direct fans to their proper location and wipe down their seat. These men were part of the pride of the Stadium, and did their best to maintain the atmosphere within. Many a fan thanked them with a gratuity - verbal or monetary - for at least modestly improving their game day experience. In April of 1997, I became one of them.

Many of the ushers were kind old men, some who had remained for many years, working the job as a supplement to their fixed income. Three of the guys were there since the Joe DiMaggio era. I liked hearing their stories, whenever there was time to talk. Many younger and 40-ish guys were there just for the thrill of working at a major league ballpark, and a earn a second check. The older ones told me they followed the team to Shea Stadium to work there during the two years of renovation undertaken on Yankee Stadium in 1974-1975. After their return to the Bronx, things coasted along for ten more seasons, but the red caps disappeared and things began to change.

The richest franchise in baseball suddenly felt the need to start harassing its small time employees into oblivion. During difficult union negotiations in 1986, the ushers' union managed to survive, though they lost the right to accept gratuities. This undesirable provision reduced the group's membership somewhat. In 1989, the ushers were officially re-titled "directors", as it was no longer in their job function to lead people to seats and wipe them. That title was quite ironic as its stature was diminished.

Over the next fifteen years, working conditions at the Stadium gradually became more unpleasant. The animosity of management became more apparent to lower level employees, including the ushers. Several men were suspended for grabbing batting practice home run balls - when there were no patrons in the Stadium! Management would also send out lackeys to try to deceive or entrap us into taking tips. I was almost the victim of one of these scams, but I knew better. All along, our pay increased very little, and then just stagnated.

The union size grew smaller every year from 1997-2001, with departures and three deaths. Managerial animosity grew into a blunt desire to terminate the union. In early 1999, it was decided in the three year agreement that the number of assigned "directors" would be limited to ten men per game, to be reduced to eight and six in the two subsequent years. Mind you, in recent years, most games had employed minimum 20 men, with as many as 50 on special days such as "Subway Series" games, Sundays, Old Timers' Day, and Opening Day. Furthermore, from now on the ushers would be strictly limited to working the bleachers area. Such reward for longtime service!

I plowed on, dealing with the proverbial human dung which made up sections 39 to 45 in right field. I did my best, getting busted by some jackass on the press level with binoculars for trying to take a BP ball and almost punched on other occasions. In the year 2001, during the League Championship Series, the hammer was dropped by powers above, and all us directors were summarily dismissed before the 2001 World Series and, as we discovered via mail, for good. No contract renewal. One of the reasons given was "to cut costs in order to pay players' salaries..." The ever-present Burns Security and their customer service people, paid puny wages, would absorb our job duties. They continue to lead people to the incorrect seats to this day.

As of that last day of work, three men in our union local, the Yankee Stadium ushers/directors union, were employed by the Yankees in 1951. That was the last season of Joe DiMaggio's tenure, the first of Mickey Mantle's, and the year of the "Shot Heard 'Round the World". Over 25 others had been working during the Mickey Mantle / Roger Maris tenure. And other men in the union, like my uncle, were employed since the 1970's. They were part of the last human link to baseball's past in the Bronx, the eyes that once viewed pure baseball unscathed by modern avarice and pettiness.

At the first union meeting after the purge in November 2001, we learned of the dismissal of the entire ticket sales force, and of the failure of the ticket takers union to negotiate a decent contract. But at least they had their jobs (for now). In addition, it was pointed out that our severance paycheck might possibly arrive with an ominous "string attached". Our union had made an agreement with Yankee management that in return for this final pittance, they would not discuss their settlement with the media nor would they criticize Yankee Management. Thus, coupled with our check might be a waiver form promising by signature that each union man would not talk to the press about all that had transpired. We remaining 61 men of the Local received less than their originally promised severance pay. And we received it 18 months late. Fortunately for us, that form was not included, though I'm still unsure about whether telling this story too loudly might have any implications.

I cringe in anger when I hear the "Caca de toro" about how the Yankees give part of their World Series shares to the "little people" who work for them. The only people who got any share were the head of security and the game operations managers. That's pretty high on the foul totem pole!

Since and including the 2001 season, the Yankees have not won a World Title. Could breaking their ties to the past have broken the Yankees? The Curse of the Ushers may well have been declared. We'll find out in a few weeks if God thinks that we are more important than the Babe.