Ninety-five years. That is how long a smelly, disgruntled local tavern owner managed to live rent-free in the heads of an entire city. Honestly, if you aren't a baseball fan, the whole "Curse of the Billy Goat" thing—often mixed up by casual observers as the curse of the goat cubs—sounds like something out of a low-budget horror flick or a bored folklore student's thesis. But for the Chicago Cubs and their generational fan base, it was a heavy, suffocating reality that dictated the atmosphere of the North Side for nearly a century.
It started with a ticket. Specifically, two tickets.
Billy Sianis, the owner of the Lincoln Park-based Billy Goat Tavern, waltzed up to Wrigley Field for Game 4 of the 1945 World Series against the Detroit Tigers. He brought his pet goat, Murphy. He had a ticket for himself and, depending on who you ask or which archived newspaper clipping you dig up, a ticket for the goat too. The usher said no. P.K. Wrigley, the team owner, reportedly said the goat smelled. Sianis, furious and embarrassed, allegedly threw his hands up and declared that the Cubs would never win another World Series.
They lost that series. Then they didn't go back for 71 years.
Why the Curse of the Goat Cubs Still Messes With Our Heads
Let’s be real for a second: baseball is a game of failure. You can be a Hall of Famer and still fail seven out of ten times at the plate. But the curse of the goat cubs wasn't just about a team playing poorly. It became a psychological safety blanket for a fan base that grew comfortable with losing. When you expect the worst, the worst feels like destiny rather than bad luck or poor management.
For decades, the "curse" was the scapegoat for a front office that refused to invest in scouting or night lights. Wrigley Field didn't even have lights until 1988. Think about that. Every other team was playing in the modern era, and the Cubs were still playing like it was 1920 because they liked the "tradition."
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People love to point at 1969. The Cubs were up by nine games in August. They were rolling. Then, during a crucial series against the New York Mets at Shea Stadium, a black cat—literally a black cat—emerged from the stands and circled Ron Santo while he was in the on-deck circle. The Cubs collapsed. The Mets won the Series. Fans didn't blame the tired arms of the pitching staff; they blamed the cat, which they saw as a demonic extension of Sianis’s goat.
It’s easy to mock this. It’s harder when you’re sitting in the bleachers in 2003, watching Steve Bartman reach for a foul ball that Moises Alou probably would have caught. I remember that night. The air in Chicago didn't just feel cold; it felt cursed. The collective groan of thousands of people wasn't just about one play. It was the crushing realization that "it" was happening again. The curse of the goat cubs had found a new vessel, and this time it was a guy in headphones and a turtleneck.
The Science of Sports Superstition
Psychologists have spent years looking at why we do this. Why do grown adults believe a dead goat can influence a 95-mph fastball? B.F. Skinner, the famous behaviorist, once did a study on pigeons where he gave them food at random intervals. The pigeons started developing "rituals"—spinning in circles or hopping on one leg—because they thought their specific movement triggered the food.
We are the pigeons.
When the Cubs lost, we looked for the movement. We looked for the goat. We looked for the curse. It provided a narrative structure to what is actually just a chaotic, random sport. It gave the losing a purpose.
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How Theo Epstein Actually Killed the Ghost
By the time 2011 rolled around, the Cubs were a mess. They were losing 100 games a year. The "curse" was the only thing people talked about because the product on the field was unwatchable. Enter Theo Epstein.
Theo didn't care about goats. He had already broken the Curse of the Bambino in Boston, so he was essentially a professional exorcist for hire. His approach was the polar opposite of "superstition." He focused on:
- Drafting high-ceiling position players (Kris Bryant, Javier Baez).
- Quantifiable metrics rather than "gut feelings" about players.
- Ignoring the media narrative.
He basically told the city that the curse of the goat cubs was a myth used to excuse incompetence. It took five years of gutting the roster and building a "Cubs Way" manual that covered everything from how to run the bases to how to handle a slump.
When 2016 finally happened, it wasn't a miracle. It was a mathematical inevitability. Even then, the "curse" tried to make one last appearance. Game 7. Rain delay. The Cubs had blown a lead. If you were a Cubs fan, you were convinced the clouds were literally the ghost of Billy Sianis laughing at you. But Jason Heyward gave a speech in a weight room, the rain stopped, and the world changed.
The Legacy of the Goat in Modern Chicago
Does anyone still believe in it? Sort of.
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The Billy Goat Tavern is still there on Lower Michigan Avenue. It’s a great place for a "cheezborger," and they still have the photos of the goat on the wall. But the venom is gone. The curse of the goat cubs transitioned from a genuine fear to a marketing gimmick the moment Kris Bryant threw that ball to Anthony Rizzo for the final out in Cleveland.
We see this in other sports too. The "Curse of the Billy Goat" paved the way for the "Curse of the Colonel" in Japanese baseball or the "Curse of Rocky Colavito" in Cleveland. Humans need stories. We need villains. If we can't blame the shortstop for booting a grounder, we blame a farm animal from 1945.
Moving Past the Superstition
If you're still holding onto the idea that external forces are keeping your favorite team—or your own life—from succeeding, the history of the Cubs offers a pretty blunt lesson.
The curse lived as long as the organization allowed it to. The moment they prioritized talent, data, and mental toughness over "tradition" and "luck," the goat vanished. It turns out that a 1.000 OPS is a lot more powerful than an old hex.
To truly move past the "curse" mindset in your own life or fandom, consider these steps:
- Identify the "Goat": What is the one excuse you use for every failure? Is it "the economy," "bad luck," or "my boss"?
- Audit the Data: Look at the actual numbers. The Cubs didn't lose for 100 years because of a goat; they lost because they had the third-lowest scouting budget in the league for a decade.
- Change the Environment: The Cubs renovated Wrigley Field. They updated the locker rooms. They stopped acting like a museum and started acting like a high-performance lab.
- Accept the Rain Delay: In any major endeavor, things will go wrong at the 11th hour. The 2016 Cubs didn't panic during the rain delay; they used it to reset.
The curse of the goat cubs is officially dead, buried under a 2016 championship banner. But its history serves as a permanent reminder of how easily we let myths dictate our reality until someone has the guts to prove them wrong.
Next Steps for the Obsessed Fan:
Go visit the Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago. Order a double cheeseburger (no fries, just chips). Look at the yellowed newspaper clippings on the wall. It’s a museum of a mental prison that a whole city eventually escaped. Then, go to Wrigley and look at the statues of the men who actually broke the spell—not with magic, but with a lot of hard work and a few very well-timed home runs.