For the better part of a century, the Boston Red Sox had the reputation of being cursed with bad luck after then-owner Harry Frazee notoriously traded Babe Ruth in 1919 to the rival New York Yankees for $100,000 due to financial trouble stemming from his business endeavors as a producer of Broadway plays.
The Red Sox had won five championships between 1903 and 1918 before selling off Ruth — and they didn’t win another until 2004 after they exorcised their demons and became the first team to come back from a 3-0 deficit in a seven-game series when they beat the Yankees in the ALCS. That period of time without a World Series win has been infamously dubbed “The Curse of the Bambino.”
Boston has since won three more rings since finally breaking the curse.
But the Red Sox’s cursed past is a very recent memory for lifetime fans like Donnie Wahlberg, of New Kids on the Block fame, who knows all too well about the heartbreak that came with those lovable losers from Boston.
In an exclusive clip from ESPN’s upcoming three-part docuseries Believers: Boston Red Sox (watch above), Wahlberg tells a story about his father’s reaction to Boston’s heartbreaking Game 6 loss to the New York Mets before eventually losing the 1986 World Series.
“For whatever reason, my friends asked me to go out with them that night, and I didn’t stay home to watch with my dad,” recalled Wahlberg, who would have been 17 years old at the time. “By the time I got to the front door, it had all unfolded and I walked in the front door, and my dad was still there and he said, ‘You’ll be watching Game 7 alone, goodnight.’ And it wasn’t ’cause he was mad at me for going out, it’s just his heart got broken again.”
Believers: Boston Red Sox premieres on the ESPN app on Friday (Sept. 26) and also features appearances and commentary from other famous Red Sox lifers, including Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Katie Nolan, Bill Burr, Uzo Aduba, Sam Jay, Maria Menounos, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Neil deGrasse Tyson, along with members of the 2004 World Series-winning Red Sox roster: Johnny Damon, Curt Schilling, David Ortiz, Kevin Millar and Bronson Arroyo.
Watch the trailer for the series below: