The Billy Goat Curse: Losing and Superstition in Cubs Baseball Since World War II (review)

A recent focus on “sports curses” coupled with the 100th anniversary of the Chicago Cubs’ last world championship opens the door for Gil Bogen’s The Billy Goat Curse: Losing and Superstition in Cubs Baseball Since World War II. Bogen starts with a review of the “glory years” of the early 1900s when the Cubs were competitive and always a threat to win the pennant. Early in the work, Bogen also introduces William “Billy” Sianis, the man at the center of the “Curse of the Billy Goat” said to have plagued the franchise since 1945. Sianis’s immigrant story is intertwined with brief coverage of the Cubs’ exploits from 1911 to 1945. Using an odd plot device, Bogen wonders what Sianis was doing or feeling during various points in Cubs history long before Billy’s path would cross with the franchise in any meaningful way.

Entering the 1945 season, we see the Cubs again competitive and Billy Sianis a successful man-about-town and owner of a tavern in close proximity to both Wrigley Field and Chicago Stadium. The epicenter of the curse begins as Sianis purchases a ticket for himself and his goat, the mascot of his bar, to watch Game 4 of the 1945 World Series. Competing stories have Sianis being turned away at the gate or asked to leave after being allowed in because Cubs owner Phillip Wrigley thought the goat smelled. Infuriated, Sianis placed a curse on the franchise, sending a telegram reading “Who smells now?” to Wrigley as the Cubs lost the series.

The book chronicles the Cubs’ struggles over the next twenty-five years as Sianis becomes increasingly successful. Bogen indicates the location of Sianis’s tavern allowed him access to generations of Cubs fans who would stop by to have a drink after the game and hear Sianis boast of his curse. In 1964, the tavern was moved to a new location near the media centers in Chicago, giving Sianis a new audience for his curse story—newspaper writers who had the power to spread the story to a wider audience. Bogen goes on to give detailed summaries of several modern, successful seasons on the northside (1969, 1973, 1984, 1989, 1997, and 2003), including the late-season collapses in each case.

In 1970, Billy Sianis died, leaving the tavern and the legacy of the curse to his nephew Sam, who tried several times to help end the curse. On July 4, 1973, Sam visited Wrigley with the goat where they were again turned away at the gate, precipitating a 7–30 collapse by the previously first-place Cubs, and later they appeared outside Wrigley Field prior to Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS (the now-infamous “Bartman game”). The work finishes with short chapters mixing recent Cubs history with discussions of superstition, other sports curses (such as the “Sports Illustrated jinx”), and the possibility of using exorcism to remove the curse on the Cubs.

While a sometimes interesting and relatively quick read, the book never effectively establishes its stated premises. Though the title indicates a work about “losing Cubs baseball since World War II”, the seasons Bogen chooses to log in detail are the most successful seasons of the recent Cubs past, while the truly miserable seasons are passed over with one line or ignored entirely. Even a chapter titled “Bad As Usual” documents the 2004 season where the Cubs won 89 games and were in the playoff race until the last days of September. The intent of chronicling the good seasons is to highlight the most well-known occurrences of the curse when a good Cubs squad collapsed under the weight of history. This strategy would have been more effective had the superstition and curses portions been better constructed. Superstition is mentioned sparingly, specifically appearing in a few mentions of fan rituals and one short chapter listing the quirks of several big-league players. None...