The “Curse of the Bambino” is less the legacy of an unlucky baseball team, and more the result of a 1988 book by then-Boston Globe writer Dan Shaughnessy. Even so, “the curse” is a term that better sums up the history of heartbreaking losses and playoff futility endured by the Red Sox Nation and witnessed by all other baseball fans, and rolls incalculably quicker off of tongues than the name of the man who coined the phrase.
And so, for Toronto Raptors fans, who will ask as their team approaches its 10-year anniversary whether or not we will ever get to endure a championship loss, our history of failure will be known as, “The Curse of the Junk Yard Dog.”
A simple rule in sports: Don’t trade fan favourites. Raptors fans will come to know Glen Grunwald as the one who traded away the only player to date who truly loved playing for the the team. When Jerome Williams, a.k.a. JYD, was traded to the Chicago Bulls on Dec. 1, 2003 as part of a package that included Antonio Davis and saw Jalen Rose and Donyell Marshall come to Toronto in return, the reaction was celebratory. On paper the Raptors got the better part of the deal, which may be the difference between JYD and the Babe, in that one is a role player and one a legend, but the Raptors’ record at the time of the trade was 8-8, a .500 clip the team will fail to meet by season’s end.
There is tremendous insecurity about being a Toronto sports fan in anything but hockey. We constantly wonder, at the acquisition of every new player, whether or not they too will complain about being marooned in our city that is seen by most in pro-American sports as a remote outpost from which return is unlikely. Then, of course, they return at the nearest possible convenience to the U.S. Not JYD, though. Upon learning of his trade to the Raptors, the then-Piston jumped in his car and drove through the night to the town he became determined to make his home. In fact, he surely would have, were it not for one of those players who wished to return to ‘civilization’—the whiny, anti-Raptor, Antonio Davis. Meanwhile, JYD, a helpless victim of his ittedly large contract, now wears his Raptors shorts under those of his new team.
Since the trade the Raptors have lost to the Bulls—one of the only teams in the Eastern conference currently sporting a worse record, three times. During each loss, while we watched Vince grimace and Kevin O’Neill feign competence, the biggest void was that left by a smile that was at once one of the best and worst any of us have ever seen.
I hope that, much like Dan Shaughnessy behind “The Curse of the Bambino,” at the heart of this curse will be yours truly, leaving Raptors fans everywhere to damn the day we traded JYD each time Vince Carter twists an ankle.
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