The REAL Curse of the Bambino

According to legend, when Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth's contract to the New York Yankees in 1919, the baseball deities rewarded such a monumental lack of vision and obvious hatred of fans who like winners with a curse upon the Sox fortunes. A previously strong team became a perennially weak team, with brief flashes of glory all the more heart-breaking because some kind of win-killing mishap that seemed dictated by cruel fates always intervened.

This "Curse of the Bambino" seemed broken when the Sox won the 2004 World Series. But an investigation by CBS has shown that Sox owners apparently still hate their fans, as they charge more per ounce for ballpark beer than any other major league team. At $0.60 per ounce, they in fact charge more than twice per ounce than the last-place team, the Los Angeles Angels, to whom you will remit a mere $0.28 for your watery adult beverage.

Of course, based on the seasons each team is having, you would expect the 45-91 Houston Astros -- whose fans have more reason to drink this year than anybody else -- to charge either more than other teams as a way of maximizing profits or to charge less than everybody else as a humanitarian gesture. But they're in the middle of the pack at about $0.36 per ounce.

Now, if we expand that to base prices on, say, historical records, then the Chicago Cubs ought to be paying fans to drink.