Bakke
continued from page 5A
the first day of the meet. The
NCAAs last through Saturday.
Academi-Ducks
Three Oregon track and field ath
letes were given honors of a differ
ent kind than NCAA qualifying
marks on Thursday.
Pac-10 decathlon champion Bil
ly Pappas and senior distance
runner Adam Bergquist were
named to the Verizon District VIII
All-Academic first team, while
sophomore pole vaulter Woods
was named to the second team.
Pappas, a psychology major with
a 3.61 GPA, was also named to the
same academic honor last season,
as well as being named to the Pac
10 All-Academic team.
It was the first such honor for
Bergquist, an exercise and move
ment science major who main
tains a 3.99 GPA. Bergquist was
named to the Pac-10 All-Acade
mic team his sophomore and jun
ior years.
Oregon was the only school with
multiple representatives on the
District VIII squad, which encom
passes the entire west coast, Ari
zona and Hawaii.
E-mail sports reporter Peter Hockaday
atpeterhockaday@dailyemerald.com.
Red Sox fans seek an end to the Curse
By Dick Polman
Knight Ridder Newspapers
SUDBURY, Mass. (KRT) — The Boston Red
Sox are tearing up the American League, win
ning nearly 75 percent of their games, pound
ing the ball at a collective .300 clip, posting the
best pitching stats in the circuit. No wonder
their fans are miserable.
They last bestrode the baseball world during
the Woodrow Wilson era, so they expect the
worst. Maybe ace hurler Pedro Martinez blows
out his arm for good. Or shortstop Nomar Gar
ciaparra shatters his wrist again. Or the Green
Monster wall falls on Rickey Henderson’s
head. Or slugger Manny Ramirez breaks a fin
ger... wait, he just did that.
But all is not lost. Before the foliage turns
color and the usual September swoon begins,
before another ball inexplicably skips through
a Sox fielder’s legs, it is deemed imperative that
Babe Ruth’s piano be pulled from the murky
depths of Willis Pond.
That’s the deal: Find the piano, and break
the Curse of the Bambino that has dogged this
team since the Sox won their last World Se
ries in 1918.
No kidding, the state of Massachusetts has
issued a permit for divers to search the pond,
in this suburb 20 miles west of Boston, be
cause there’s reason to believe that young Sox
hurler Babe Ruth, while partying at the pond
during the winter of 1918, pushed his piano
into the drink, or perhaps slid it onto the ice
and just let it sink.
Divers have descended twice, and they’ll try
again soon. Kevin Kennedy, a local Sox fan
who researched the piano and triggered the
project, enthused: “This is the best chance we
have of reversing the curse — or, rather, the
perception of a curse. It’ll take something sen
sational to reverse it. The piano went into the
mud 84 years ago, and the Sox have been down
there ever since.”
Maybe it doesn’t sound rational to tie a
team’s star-crossed legacy to the sinking of a
piano, or (more typically) to the fact that
Boston sold Ruth to the hated New York Yan
kees two winters later. But the curse seems as
real, and tastes as sour, as the traditional au
tumn cider.
Forget the World Series dribbler that flum
moxed Bill Buckner, and even the pop-fly
homer by Yankee Bucky Dent in the ’78 play
off. How about the ’48 playoff loss? Or ‘49,
when the Sox handed the pennant to the Yan
kees on the last weekend? Or ’74, when they
led their division by five games on Aug. 30 and
finished seven back? Or the seventh-game
World Series losses in ’46, ’67, ’75 and ’86?
And that’s just for starters.
David Kruh, whose play “The Curse of the
Bambino” sold out a Boston theater last year,
said the other day: “Everyone is interested in
the piano. The fans feel helpless. They sit [at
Fenway Park], and they know they can’t af
fect the game or how the wind is blowing or
whether Manny breaks his finger. So they
ask, ‘What can I do to help break the curse?’
Some have tried exorcism. Kevin’s trying his
own thing.”
Kennedy said: “You hate to whine, because
there are more important things in life. Maybe
we’re a bunch of crybabies, I don’t know. But
we take our baseball seriously, so this quest of
mine is from the heart” — or, as he pronounced
it, the haht.
He has amassed solid evidence that Ruth
rented a cabin at the pond’s edge during the
winter of 1917-18, and that Ruth’s wife, He
len, played a piano to entertain the local kids.
But stories about the piano’s subsequent de
mise have been circulating here for 80 years.
Kennedy heard them back when he was a
Boy Scout.
Lee Swanson first got the word roughly half
a century ago, when he was 12, hanging around
his father’s country store in Sudbury. As he re
called: “Our regulars would come in, always
for tobacco and milk, and they’d sit on the bar
rels and talk. The story was consistently the
same, no matter who said it. I also heard it over
at the Congregational Church.”
Actually, the details vary. Swanson, who
runs the Sudbury Historical Society, dis
counts the claim that Ruth threw the piano
in the pond. Not even Ruth was that strong,
he said.
No, he thinks the piano sank during a party;
as one elderly resident told him recently, “It
was a disgrace to the neighborhood that he’d
put a fine piano on the ice and lose it.”
©2002, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed
by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services. .
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110 INSTRUCTION/TUTORING
High School student looking for a
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115 GARAGE/MOVING SALES
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120 MISCELLANEOUS FOR SALE
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CLASSIFIEDS
To place an ad, call (541) 346-4343 or stop by Room 300 Erb Memorial Union
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Room 300, Erb Memorial Union, PO. Box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403
130 CARS/TRUCKS/CYCLES
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175 WANTED
Buying dorm refrigerators.
$10-$50 each. Bring ’em to
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Do you need $50?
I need your motorcycle to take skills
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205 HELP WANTED
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205 HELP WANTED
Access to a computer?
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CATHOLIC CAMPUS
MINISTRY
SL Thomas More Newman Center p:
Daily Mass Mon-Fri, 5:15PM *
Wed. Mass 9:00PM
Sat. Mass 5:00PM
Sun. Mass 9:00,11:00AM,
7:30PM (Student Mass)
Campus Ministry at
Central Lutheran Church (ELCA)
Welcomes you!
Holy Communion:
Sundays 8:15 & 10:45am; 6:30pm
Bible Study, Food & Conversation
Mondays at 8pm in the
Christus House Lounge
18th & Potter • 345-0395