Red Sox Have Been Completely Cursed Since Some Idiot Broke Their 2018 World Series Trophy With a Beer Can

What's another 86 years, huh?

The Boston Red Sox were the most famously cursed sports franchise in America before 2004, when Dave Roberts stole a base, David Ortiz went into monster mode, and an internet troll smeared Heinz all over his medical socks.

But while you were freaking out over Tom Brady's sponsored content for Hulu, you might've missed something. Are, uh...are the Red Sox cursed again? And did it all start on one boastful morning in late 2018? As Boston's '18 World Series trophy paraded around the city, one fan callously chucked a full beer can at it, mistaking this for a Super Bowl parade, assuming Gronk would be on the other end of the toss. He wasn't, none of the old, white owners of the Red Sox wanted a Beer 30 Ice, and the can struck metal at high velocity.

That doesn't seem great, right? Damaging one of the game's great artifacts with brashness isn't something the Baseball Gods would look fondly on, theoretically?

Of course, this was also the morning that Humble Alex Cora celebrated the title by telling the Yankees to suck on it, so perhaps the curse originated there.

The fact of the matter is, since this dent was created, absolutely nothing has gone right for the Boston Red Sox, which is just a damn shame. Let's follow the timeline, shall we?

In the wake of the championship glow, Boston re-signed Nathan Eovaldi, perpetually injured, and with an entire extra-innings postseason game heroically on his right shoulder, to a four-year, $68 million deal. Eovaldi...got hurt, then pitched to a 5.99 ERA when healthy. They also re-signed World Series MVP Steve Pearce to a $6.25 million deal, both at the exact moment when the team apparently got a new mandate, claiming financial restrictions.

After spending cash without restraint, even in their title's wake, management suddenly clamped down on the budget for future purchases, making the reward for Eovaldi suddenly look like malpractice. Mookie Betts is on the verge of departing partially because of a kindness to a World Series hero (Eovaldi), before the front office switched their operations strategy. Cursed stuff.

Of course, then there was the on-field regression across the board in 2019. Blessed with largely the same roster that set records in 2018, Boston won 24 fewer games the next season. With a juiced ball, Andrew Benintendi hit only 13 homers. Boston scored 25 more runs in 2019 than they had the year prior! Very little made sense, but game-by-game, every single thing turned out worse.

Their season effectively came clattering down in early August after being swept at Yankee Stadium in four games, all of which went as disastrously as possible.

Then...hmm, what else...

Ahh, right! They lost their beloved manager over someone else's scandal.

Alex Cora, the very same man who wanted a certain group of people to suck on something right before the flag hit the can, was fired on Jan. 14 over his sign-stealing in Houston, and it was revealed that he brought certain strategies with him to Boston, too.

Cora even tried to get Carlos Beltran implicated to ruin the Yankees, but instead got his good friend fired from an entirely different franchise, days after he himself was canned.

Canned...hmm...that sounds familiar.

Long Live the Beer Can Curse, a hex that originated from a far, far stupider reason than selling Babe Ruth to finance a Broadway musical. Got a little too big for your britches there, Red Sox. Perhaps if you show the Gods some respect, they'll be lenient again, at some point.

Lord knows they helped you a bit too much from 2004-2018.