Liverpool Red Sox

The Boston Red Sox are coming to the Premier League. Should Liverpool fans be happy? Curses in sports come no bigger than the one that burdened the Red Sox for almost a century. They sold the great Babe Ruth, for a song (almost literally), and couldn’t win a World Series ever since. Meanwhile, their heated rival the New York Yankees won title after title after title. Any Texas Hold em poker cash game player will tell you there are some guys that can’t seem to win, and others who can’t help but win. Curses are real, and a run of bad luck can be catastrophe. Any card player ten years ago, for that reason, would probably tell the good people that fill the terraces of Anfield the last thing they’d want is a connection to the Red Sox.

But times change..

There is a scary parallel between the two franchises. Liverpool has an arch-rival in another city that suddenly has lorded over them. Like the Red Sox, once were the darlings of baseball, Liverpool was the supreme club, and just as the Yankees took over that title and never looked back, so too did Manchester United. Since the inception of the Premier League Manchester United has dominated things (co-incidence or not that they have a marketing agreement with the New York Yankees) and Liverpool has not won a single league title. It seems Liverpool is the cursed franchise. In that same time span, the Red Sox, after a particularly glittering period of success for the modern Yankees under Joe Torre managed to win not one but two titles one-upping the proud Yankees. The architect of their change of fortune? The man who just bought Liverpool. Looking at how he turned around the Red Sox, he did so in the most improbable of fashions. He handed over the player personnel decisions to a guy who probably got carded when he tried to buy beer. All Theo Epstein did was put together a rag tag crew self-described as idiots. Perhaps, the curse of the Bambino fell to them because they were too out of it to realize the magnitude of what they were trying to accomplish. It fell in the most dramatic of ways possible, as the Red Sox became the only team in baseball history to win a best of seven series after starting off by losing the first three games. Who did they beat? The New York Yankees, of course. They followed that up by steamrolling the Cardinals in the World Series to bury the curse once and for all. One day, Liverpool fans would like nothing better than to close out their season with a victory over Manchester United to win the league title. Perhaps, they could perform a treble winning the Champions League and FA Cup against their same hated rivals. It might take that type of domination to match the Red Sox comeback, in terms of scope. Course Liverpool isn’t greedy any more they’d just be happy with a title no matter who they beat to get it. Owner John W. Henry came to Red Sox facing similar problems to the ones he faces in Liverpool. The once proud franchise in turbulent times. The stadia at both featured grand old fields soaked in tradition but also burdened by age. Henry’s solution to Fenway Park was to upgrade it and celebrate it. Instead of getting mired in a bid to match the new stadiums popping up around the league he reinvigorated a celebrated park the boasts the Green Monster and is as beloved in Boston as they players that play on it. Anfield is held in similarly high regard in Liverpool, so it’s possible, that Henry will not look to break ground on a new park but to shore up an old one. He wants to build a winner quickly and knows breaking the bank at a bad financial time is not the way to add players. Understandably Liverpool fans are leery of an North American owner considering what they’ve been through but the practical and creative nature of John Henry may be just what the doctor ordered.

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