2004 World Series in each of these four leagues. The Red Sox's win in the World Series ended the "Curse of the Bambino", which supposedly had afflicted the team ever since the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1919. Pitcher Derek Lowe and other players said that the team would no longer hear "1918!" at Yankee Stadium ever again. Kevin Millar said to all Red Sox fans: "We wanted to do it so bad for the city of Boston. To win a World Series with this on our chests, it hasn't been done since 1918. So rip up
Babe Ruth fans. In Cobb's case, the incidents were sometimes marked by violence. Ruth's biographers agreed that he benefited from the timing of his ascension to "Home Run King". The country had been hit hard by both the war and the 1918 flu pandemic and longed for something to help put these traumas behind it. Ruth also resonated in a country which felt, in the aftermath of the war, that it took second place to no one. Montville argued that Ruth was a larger-than-life figure who was capable of unprecedented athletic feats in the nation's largest city. The Babe became an icon