Curse of Billy Penn
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The Curse of William Penn is an alleged curse, sometimes used to explain the failure of professional sports teams based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to win championships since the March 1987 addition of the One Liberty Place skyscraper, which exceeded the height of William Penn's statue atop Philadelphia City Hall. Since then, no Philadelphia major sports team (baseball, football, basketball, or ice hockey) has won a world championship in its respective league. The last professional team to win a championship was the Philadelphia 76ers in the 1983 NBA Finals, when they swept the Los Angeles Lakers in four games.
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[edit] Origins of the Curse
Atop City Hall at Broad and Market Streets in Center City, Philadelphia stands a statue of William Penn, the city founder and original proprietor of the then-British colony of Pennsylvania (meaning "Penn's Woods"). Through a gentlemen's agreement (not written into law), no building in the city rose above this statue, until in March 1987, a modern steel and glass skyscraper called One Liberty Place opened just three blocks away. One Liberty Place dwarfed City Hall by 397 feet (121m), soaring 945 feet (288m) in height compared with the latter's 548 feet (167m). Its sister skyscraper, Two Liberty Place, at 848 ft (258m), would soon follow.
Philadelphia sports teams had just before then enjoyed an enviable run of success: Major League Baseball's Philadelphia Phillies had won the 1980 World Series and the 1983 National League pennant; the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers had won back-to-back Stanley Cups in 1974 and 1975, and were a regular presence in the finals (to wit, 1976, 1980, 1985, and 1987); the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles had appeared in Super Bowl XV (despite being defeated by the Oakland Raiders); and the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers had won the championship in 1983, as well as making the finals in 1977, 1980, and 1982.1 In fact, before 1980, the Phillies had appeared in only two other World Series, in 1915 and 1950, and the Eagles had won no NFC Conference championships since the 1966 agreement that had created the Super Bowl, while the 76ers won NBA titles in both Philadelphia and in their prior incarnation, the Syracuse Nationals. Construction on One Liberty Plaza began in 1984, one year after the last championship season in Philadelphia.
Unlike other "curses" that seem to strike particular teams (the Boston Red Sox's Curse of the Bambino, the Chicago White Sox's Curse of the Black Sox – both of which seem to have been lifted, and the Chicago Cubs' Curse of the Billy Goat), this evil is said to have struck four professional teams in the same city, and has now drawn "first blood" with an untimely death.
[edit] Philadelphia sports since the curse's inception
[edit] Major-league sports
After One Liberty Place opened, Philadelphia's franchises began a pattern of narrow, but spectacular, failures to win a conference or national championship: the Flyers lost the Stanley Cup Finals twice (1987—in seven games to the Edmonton Oilers, a mere two months after One Liberty Place opened, and again in 1997 in a four-game sweep by the Detroit Red Wings), the Phillies lost the 1993 World Series in six games to the Toronto Blue Jays, the 76ers lost the 2001 NBA Finals to the Los Angeles Lakers in five games, and the Eagles lost three straight NFC Championship games from the 2001 through 2003 seasons, before finally breaking through after the 2004 season and reaching Super Bowl XXXIX, only to lose to the New England Patriots by three points.
In addition, losses in conference finals have occurred seven times since the opening of One Liberty Place, including four by the Flyers, in 1989, 1995, 2000, and 2004. The 2000 team was one win away from a Stanley Cup Finals appearance, after leading the New Jersey Devils 3-1 before losing three straight, and the 2004 team lost Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals to the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Eagles accounted for the other three conference-final losses; they lost the NFC Championship Game (the winner of which meets the winner of the AFC's corresponding game in the Super Bowl) three years in a row from 2001 to 2003, thus becoming the first NFL team to do this in either conference since the Dallas Cowboys of 1980-1982, losing the last two at home after posting the best record in the NFC. No other team in NFL history has lost back-to-back conference title games at home since the NFL began its practice in 1975 of awarding home-field advantage in postseason play based on regular-season record.
Some believe the curse manifested again on December 19, 2004. The Eagles clinched home-field advantage for the NFC playoffs, but wide receiver Terrell Owens suffered a fractured fibula and severe ankle sprain, which was expected to end his season. Even so, the Eagles won the NFC Championship Game 27-10 over the Atlanta Falcons, breaking their triple NFC Championship losing streak. However, the Eagles lost 24-21 to the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXIX on February 6, 2005, despite Owens's return against medical advice. Donovan McNabb threw three interceptions after having had only eight in the entire regular season, and was speculated to be sick with the flu, even to the point that McNabb vomited during the Eagles' final offensive run.
[edit] Other Sports
The curse is sometimes also extended to include Bensalem-Township-based thoroughbred racehorse Smarty Jones, who saw his bid for horse racing's Triple Crown evaporate when he finished second (by one length) in the 2004 Belmont Stakes after decisive victories in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, including trouncing Belmont winner Birdstone by 15¼ lengths in the Derby.
The curse did not affect Delaware Park-based Afleet Alex, since he did not win the Kentucky Derby, but he almost suffered what would have been a traumatic injury at the Preakness, only to come back from the near mishap to win the Preakness and later the Belmont Stakes.
Although the curse is not generally thought of as extending to college sports, two Philadelphia-based college basketball teams, the St. Joseph's Hawks and the Villanova Wildcats, which had very successful seasons in 2004 and 2006 respectively, failed to reach the Final Four of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Both were eliminated in the fourth-round Elite Eight matches, with St. Joe's, first seed in the East Regional, losing a heartbreaker to Oklahoma State, and Villanova, first seed in the Minneapolis Regional, falling to eventual NCAA-champion Florida. A third Philadelphia team, the Temple Owls, also failed to reach the Final Four five times due to losses in the fourth round (1988, 1991, 1993, 1999, 2001).
The curse, however, does not seem to affect Philadelphia's minor-league hockey franchise, the AHL's Philadelphia Phantoms, who won the Calder Cup championship trophy twice since the curse's inception, in both 1998 and 2005 (the latter championship occurring during the NHL Lockout effectively making them the top North American professional hockey team), the Philadelphia Wings of the National Lacrosse League, who have won six titles since 1989, the Philadelphia KiXX of the Major Indoor Soccer League, who won the league's championship in 2001-2002, nor the Philadelphia Barrage who won the Major League Lacrosse championship in 2004 and 2006. The curse has not yet applied to the Arena Football League's Philadelphia Soul, despite lackluster seasons after signing top AFL quarterback Tony Graziani in 2003.
[edit] First Blood: The Death of Barbaro
In 2006, another Philadelphia-based race horse, Barbaro, won the 2006 Kentucky Derby and was favored to capture the Triple Crown. But, during the beginning phase of the 2006 Preakness Stakes, the horse suffered a fractured right hind leg and had to be transported to the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania where it underwent a 5-hour surgery to repair the leg.
Despite the success of the operation, and Barbaro's ability to walk unaided, Barbaro developed laminitis in his left hind hoof, with an abscess ultimately developing in his right hoof, with further symptoms of laminitis developing on both front hooves, thus rendering the horse unable to stand on all legs, and bringing so much pain and discomfort that the colt could not sleep during the night. This was discovered on the weekend of January 26-28, 2007 when New Bolton Center surgeons performed an operation to insert two additional screws into the colt's leg to further stabilize and strengthen the bones in the hopes that the colt might leave the animal hospital and return to owners Roy and Gretchen Jackson's West Grove farm. Sadly, because of the extreme discomfort and attempts by surgeons to correct the abscess and laminitis, on January 29, 2007, Barbaro was euthanized, thus for the first time, the curse has drawn "first blood."
The "first blood" case could not be applied to Flyers' star goalie Pelle Lindbergh, who was tragically killed in an automobile accident in the 1985-86 NHL season (the Flyers would make the 1986 NHL Playoffs, but were defeated in the first round), as this occurred during the time One Liberty Place was still under construction. Also, the curse could not be applied to Eagles defensive lineman Jerome Brown, another automobile accident victim (in 1992), as the Eagles would lose in the first round of the 1993 NFC Wild Card game, and at the same time, start the downward spiral of embarrassing seasons under lackluster head coach Rich Kotite. The Preakness Stakes, in thoroughbred racing terms, is the equivalent to a conference championship (the Belmont Stakes, in which Smarty Jones would lose, is the equivalent to a league championship).
[edit] Miscellaneous
In spite of the Curse, when Philadelphia sports teams have reached their league's finals, Penn's statue has often been decorated to support that team's success. For example, after the Phillies won the 1993 National League pennant, Penn was fitted with an oversize red Phillies baseball cap; when the Flyers went to the Stanley Cup finals in 1997, the city adorned Penn with an orange-torso-with-white-shoulders Flyers jersey (at the time, the combination was the Flyers' road jersey); and when the 76ers made it to the 2001 NBA Finals, a basketball was placed in Penn's hand. This tradition was not followed when the Eagles went to the Super Bowl in 2005.
While several other skyscrapers have been erected since Liberty Place's construction, it should be noted that they stand west of City Hall, and that Penn's statue faces northeast. As local sentiment goes, Penn may not be pleased, but at least his view of the Delaware River remains unobstructed. As of early 2007, construction is underway two blocks west of City Hall for what would become Philadelphia's tallest edifice, the Comcast Center, to be completed in late 2007. Interestingly, the building's main tenant, Comcast-Spectacor, owns two of the city's sports franchises, the Flyers and 76ers.
[edit] Notes
Note 1: The Phillies had their own separate run of bad luck before 1980. Until then they had been the only one of the sixteen original Major League Baseball teams formed from the 1901 National League contraction and subsequent American League foundation to have never won a World Series (the St. Louis Browns had won in 1966 and 1970 as the Baltimore Orioles). This, however, appears never to have been publicly identified as any curse, and no curse-related theories were ever offered, as their futility was largely attributed to bad players and incompetent management.
