Glenn Stout has a long but fascinating essay debunking the “Curse of the Bambino” legend, the idea that the Boston Red Sox have gone without a World Series title since 1918 because then-owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth’s contract to the Yankees. Stout claims the “curse” myth dates back only to 1986, and that in any case what drove Ruth, and later Frazee himself, out of Boston baseball was an anti-Semitic smear campaign against the non-Jewish Frazee, led by that notorious race-baiter Henry Ford.