Red Sox fans try to pacify the Babe

HAWTHORNE, N.Y. -- Chris Sobotka, wearing a Red Sox cap, walked up to Babe Ruth's grave and offered the Bambino -- dead 55 years now -- a 12-ounce bribe.

Placing an unopened can of beer on Ruth's headstone, Sobotka explained his offering: "Knowing the Babe, he was a big drinker. Maybe he'll take it easy on us and we can break this curse once and for all."

Twenty miles north of Yankee Stadium, where Sobotka's beloved Boston Red Sox battled Ruth's New York Yankees for a World Series berth, the Babe's grave in Gate of Heaven cemetery was drawing heavy traffic.

Yankees fans honored their team's starry past; Red Sox fans hoped to reverse their star-crossed existence.

Nothing much has worked since 1920, when Ruth was sold by the Red Sox to the Yankees and the "Curse of the Bambino" began. He became the game's greatest player as New York won 26 championships.

Boston has never won since.

So even after the Red Sox took Game 1 on Wednesday night, petitioners were lining up at the grave site with its depiction of Jesus guiding a little boy.

Bosox fan Kris Schneider, a hotel worker from East Meadow, had his 2-year-old son Dylan leave a plastic pacifier right on Jesus' big toe. Dylan didn't seem to miss the "binky," busy as he was rolling down the slope leading to the grave.

"There's a curse, no question about it," Schneider said. "The Sox always come up short. I figure, the Babe, a baby, a pacifier -- pacify the Babe."

Enlisting all the greats

Rich Faviano, an IBM worker from Marlboro, N.J., had something else in mind: Get Ruth riled up, have him call on some other departed Yankees and make sure the curse is enforced. Here's the message Faviano taped to the stone:

"Wake up the Babe, Joe D., Mick, Lou, Billy and Thurman! Lead the Yankees to another victory over the Red Sox!"

One Yankee fan propped a newspaper against Ruth's headstone: Wednesday's Daily News, with a determined-looking Babe, and the message "No Way" on the front page.

Salvatore Garro, a truck driver from the cemetery's maintenance crew, said the grave gets tidied early each morning. Flowers and pictures are the most common items left by visitors, but that's changed since postseason play began.

The haul from recent days included a softball, a baseball, five Yankee caps and a Red Sox cap, two baseball bats, a Scott Brosius baseball card, the special baseball section from Wednesday's New York Post, a Yankees license plate, an ash tray and an Irish blessing.

"People also leave pocket change," he said.

Sobotka, who lives in Levittown, said he had no doubts about the existence of the curse.

"I'm feeling it," he insisted. "I'm feeling it this whole series."

Even Garro, who walks the grounds every day but never recalls a single paranormal experience, acknowledged that he believed in the Ruthian Red Sox jinx.

"I don't believe in ghosts," he said. "A curse, that I believe."