Mr. Write's Page

As a red-blooded American sports fan, you no doubt are familiar with the “Curse of the Bambino.” In 1919, according to legend, the Boston Red Sox brought a curse upon the team by selling Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. The Red Sox did not win a World Series for the next 86 years.

You probably also know about the “Curse of the Billy Goat” visited upon the Chicago Cubs in 1945. It happened when a local bar owner and his pet goat were booted out of Wrigley Field during game four of the World Series.

“Them Cubs, they ain’t gonna win no more,“ the angry bar owner declared. The Cubs haven’t won so much as a National League pennant since.

Compared to those world-class curses, the “Curse of Billy Penn” in Philadelphia might seem rather bush-league. But it lasted for two decades, and as soon as an atonement of sorts was made, the curse ended.

William NMI Penn (1644-1718) was an English Quaker and real estate speculator who founded the American colony of Pennsylvania. Penn is widely lionized in the Keystone State. Indeed, no state is as closely associated with an individual as is Penn with Pennsylvania.

William Penn founded the city of Philadelphia in 1682, and appropriately, a massive bronze statue of Penn stands atop Philadelphia City Hall. The 37-foot-tall statue, created in 1894 by Alexander Calder, cuts a dashing figure above the city.

For almost a century, Penn’s statue was the tallest structure in Philadelphia. The city fathers kept it that way, turning down requests for new buildings taller than 548 feet, enabling Penn to preside proudly over the City of Brotherly Love.

In the mid-1980s, however, the city fathers caved. A rich bigshot was allowed to build One Liberty Place, which, at 945 feet, dwarfed the statue of Penn, big-time. William Penn no longer reigned over the city skyline. Worse, bigger and taller skyscrapers soon followed.

By allowing the statue to be thus diminished, so the tale is told, Philadelphia brought upon itself the “Curse of Billy Penn.”

Whether the curse was visited upon the city by the ghost of William Penn or by divine providence, it is said to have prevented the Philadelphia Phillies, Philadelphia Eagles, Philadelphia 76ers, and Philadelphia Flyers from winning a single championship for the next 21 years.

Some say the curse even affected horseracing. In 2006, a Philadelphia-based thoroughbred named Barbaro was favored to win the triple crown — until he fractured a leg during the Preakness, and his career was ended.

The curse came to an end, we are told, thanks to the communications behemoth Comcast.

Headquartered in Philadelphia since 1969, Comcast began construction of the opulent new Comcast Center in 2005. The new headquarters building would become the newest tallest skyscraper in the city.

In June 2007, during the topping-out ceremony, a steel beam was raised on the roof of the 974-foot building.

The dignitaries and construction workers signed the beam, and, in accordance with tradition, an American flag and a small tree were affixed.

Then, two workers stepped forward and attached to the beam a 25-inch-tall statue of William Penn. A whopping twenty-five inches tall.

They did so at the direction of Comcast EVP David Cohen, who had proposed the idea when construction began.

Cohen had intoned for the cameras, “Let’s once again restore Billy Penn to his rightful place and the highest location in Philadelphia.”

You’d think a company with a net worth of $73 billion could do better by William Penn than erecting a toy statue, but that’s what Billy got from Comcast.

Nevertheless, it apparently sufficed.

One year later, the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series.

Penn’s statue atop City Hall has suffered repeated indignities over the years…

The Philadelphia skyline, showing One Liberty Place (with the red dot), City Hall (center), and the Comcast Center looming at right.

The curse-ending mini-statue of William Penn affixed to the beam on top of the Comcast Center.