End of the Jinxes?

Another jinx, one that has haunted incumbent political parties of The White House for 70 years, may also be lifted Tuesday. The Washington Redskins, formerly the Boston Redskins and the Boston Braves are the central player in this old myth. For the past 16 presidential elections whenever the Redskins won their final home game (why not just final game?) before the election, the incumbent party won the presidency. When the visiting team won, the incumbent party was defeated. The jinx dates back to 1940 when the Redskins, in their final home game before the election whomped the Pittsburgh Pirates – later the Steelers –and as legend has it, foretold the coming reelection of F.D.R to his unprecedented third term. My theory goes; Boston, although never a big football town, were bitter upon losing their team and in revenge cursed D.C. – and its primary resident– by tying electoral fates to the outcome of the Redskins last home game. That makes the jinx another Boston curse.

Could 2004 be the year of the lifting of the Boston curses? With the World Series saving us all from future whining from Bo Sox fans, the time seems ripe to expunge all this voodoo. It was simply bad luck for the Sox, and bad management and play that kept them from grabbing another Series title for so long. So to is the Redskins nonsense little more than a fun statistical anomaly that played mostly upon the fact that they were a good home team during the Roosevelt administration. If so, only the Halloween mask myth would remain to be debunked, as George Bush outsold John Kerry this year. But that myth, that the candidate whose likeness sells the most masks for Halloween will be the winner, dates back to only 1980. Either way, one of the election "predictors" will be eliminated this year, along with "the Curse". And that, for empiricist minded positivists everywhere, is, to quoth Martha Stewart, "a good thing."