Sports in Boston the four major professional sports. Boston was also the site of the first game of the first baseball World Series, in 1903. The series was played between the Red Sox (then known as the "Americans") and the Pittsburgh Pirates, while the team still played at the Huntington Avenue Grounds (the site is now a part of Northeastern University). The Sox won that series and eight more since then (1912, 1915, 1916, 1918, 2004, 2007, 2013, and 2018). The 2004 team is said to have broken the 86-year-long "Curse of the Bambino." There have been many legendary players on the team;
Curse of the Black Sox in 1918 and 1917, respectively. There is a large faction of White Sox fans who dismiss the idea of a curse against the White Sox as a ridiculous (yet successful) ploy by the national media to sensationalize the team in efforts for increased ratings, instead attributing their drought to the more obvious reason: team mismanagement. The Comiskeys were very conservative spenders (which many hypothesize to be the reason that the Black Sox scandal even occurred in the first place) and it was not until 1958 that the family gave up majority ownership to Bill Veeck, who was an innovative marketer