Amidst the doom and gloom of the news lately, there was one hidden gem. It came in the form of a hidden baseball jersey, encased in the concrete of the newest incarnation of baseball's national temple: Yankee Stadium.
Photo: The All-American Pre-Game Meal.
Did you read about it? A construction worker and Boston Red Sox fan-- rivals of those New York Yankees who will play in the new stadium-- decided he could put a curse on the Yanks by burying in the foundation of the new stadium a jersey with the name of superstar Red Sox player David Ortiz, number thirty-four.
The worker helped lay the concrete for a section of the stadium and threw the jersey in with the mix. The stuff had hardened sufficiently that when someone else snitched, they had to go in with jackhammers.
Baseball is famous for superstition. It was claimed, for example, that the Red Sox laid a curse on themselves almost a century ago when they made the disastrous decision to sell then young pitcher Babe Ruth to the Yankees. The Red Sox couldn't win a World Series for decades and decades, including in those years some memorable World Series slipups. Now the curse is over, however, as the Sox have won the Series twice in the last four years.
How is it that in these secular days someone could believe that a piece of fabric buried in a building could have any effect on anything?
Old ways die hard. The ancient art of foundation deposits goes back at least four thousand years, when massive temples were built to the gods rather than to Alex Rodriguez.
For example:
King Ur-Nammu [c. 2000 BC] rebuilt and enlarged one of the most important temples in ancient Mesopotamia - the E-kur of Enlil, the chief god of the pantheon. [A] figurine, which was buried in a foundation box beneath one of the temple towers, represents the king at the start of the building project - carrying on his head a basket of clay from which would be made the critically important first brick. The foundation deposit also contained an inscribed stone tablet; beads of frit, stone and gold; chips of various stones; and four ancient date pits found perched atop the basket carried by the king.
This foundation deposit was supposed to be a bringer of good luck. It was in a way a blessing of the building project, encasing in the building itself the good intentions, wealth, and prosperity of the king. Good vibrations.
The Ortiz jersey acted like a figurine of a king, but of a king of a rival city. This king would bring ill intentions and cause bad vibrations for the usage of the baseball temple. Powerful magic, if only no one found out.
I have never heard of a curse foundation deposit, but ancient Romans used to buy curse tablets-- pieces of lead with inscriptions on them such as "May the Greens never win another chariot race"-- and leave them in the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus.
The construction worker's name is Italian. Maybe one of his ancestors bought a curse tablet for the ancient equivalent of the hated Yankees.
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