Baseball: The Boston Red Sox finally beat the New York Yankees to make it to the World Series.
It’s one of the interesting things around sports, the myth-making, the belief in winning streaks, losing streaks, and curses.
In this case, the Red Sox may have broken “The curse of the Bambino“, which is the idea that the Red Sox were cursed because they sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1918 – and true enough, Red Sox haven’t won the world series since.
Perhaps all this because it’s hard to understand & predict why one team wins the match, but we humans cannot prevent ourselves from seeing patterns everywhere, curses, magic.
Update: There’s a New York Times piece where the writer explains that the Red Sox always lose if he watches them play. This time they won because he didn’t watch.
but we humans cannot prevent ourselves from seeing patterns everywhere, curses, magic.
:) As a member of “red sox nation” … just because one sees patterns doesn’t mean there aren’t :))
Red Sox haven?t won the world series since – until now.
btw, also, they haven’t won the World Series… (yet). They just won the American League pennant – they move on to the world series this Saturday.
Thanks Nathan, I don’t know much about baseball – I’ve corrected it. I did go to a Red Sox game in Fenway park last year though…
The human brain is a pattern recognition system. Memories become anecdotes, coincidences become omens, history becomes allegory, fables and myths. It’s the mechanics of our neurobiology.
Anything is possible if the opportunity occurs often enough.
But I’m sure the Red Sox have been infected by the ‘curse’ and you can only create what you can imagine whether that is a painting or a World Series win. Anything else is an accident and unique – like ‘My Sharona’.
But it seems that humans consistently overdo it, seeing patterns where there aren’t any. Why is that? Shouldn’t that be quite disadvantageous?