Baseball hath no fury like the Babe scorned. Trading away a star player almost never commands an equal return on value, but when the Red Sox exchanged Babe Ruth for cash from the Yankees in 1919, the Boston team didn’t expect to pick up a curse along with their hefty check. After having won five of the first fifteen World Series in the history of professional baseball, the team from Fenway would spend the next 86 years in a championship drought. The Yankees, on the other hand, would score a record 26 World Series titles over that period before the Red Sox ended their ‘curse’ with a championship win in 2004.
Top 10 Sports Superstitions
From the playoff beard to lucky shorts, sport stars are fond of using of unconventional measures to ensure their team's success in the big game. As the 2011 World Series kicks off, TIME takes a look at superstitions that have become intertwined with the wide world of sports