The Curse of the Billy Goat was a sports curse that was supposedly placed on the Chicago Cubs Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise in 1945, by Billy Goat Tavern owner William Sianis. The curse lasted 71 years, from 1945 to the Cubs championship season. During Game 4 of the 1945 World Series at Wrigley Field, Sianis's pet goat, named Murphy, was bothering other fans, and so the pair were asked to leave the stadium. Outraged, Sianis allegedly declared, "Them Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more", which had been interpreted to mean that the Cubs would never win another National League (NL) pennant, at least for the remainder of Sianis's life.
The Cubs lost the 1945 World Series to the Detroit Tigers, and did not win a pennant or World Series championship again until 2016. The Cubs had last won the World Series in 1908. After the incident with Sianis and Murphy, the Cubs did not play in the World Series for the next 71 years until, on the 46th anniversary of William Sianis's death, the "curse" was broken when they defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers 5–0 in Game 6 of the 2016 National League Championship Series to win the NL pennant. The Cubs then defeated the American League (AL) champion Cleveland Indians 8–7 in 10 innings in Game 7 to win the World Series, 108 years after their last win.
Origins of the curse
The exact nature of Sianis's curse differs in various accounts of the incident. Some state that he declared that no World Series games would ever again be played at Wrigley Field, while others believe that his ban was on the Cubs appearing in the World Series, making no mention of a specific venue. Sianis’s family claims that he dispatched a telegram to team owner Philip K. Wrigley that read, “You are going to lose this World Series and you are never going to win another World Series again. You are never going to win a World Series again because you insulted my goat.”
Whatever the truth, the Cubs were up two games to one in the 1945 World Series, but ended up losing Game 4, as well as the best-of-seven series, four games to three. The curse was immortalized in newspaper columns over the years, particularly by syndicated columnist Mike Royko. The curse gained widespread attention during the 2003 postseason, when Fox television commentators played it up during the Cubs-Marlins matchup in the National League Championship Series (NLCS). According to an account in the Chicago Sun of October 7, 1945, the goat was turned away at the gate, and Sianis left the goat tied to a stake in a parking lot and went into the game alone. There was mention of a lawsuit, but no mention of a curse.
Between their 1908 triumph, which was the Cubs' second world championship (they'd also won the Series in 1907 to become baseball's first back-to-back winners as well as the first franchise to appear in three consecutive World Series), and 1945, the first year of the alleged Billy Goat Curse, the Cubs won the National League pennant six times but failed to win the Series: in 1910, in 1918 (won by the Boston Red Sox who themselves would soon become victims of an alleged baseball curse and not win another Series for 86 years), in 1929, in 1932 (known for Babe Ruth's called shot at Wrigley Field), in 1935 (a rematch of the 1908 series against the Detroit Tigers, with the Tigers winning this time, their first Series triumph in five appearances dating back to the early 1900s), and in 1938.
