Valiant Effort
Yankee minions on their knees in five-hour effort to unearth a Sox jersey planted under two feet of concrete, while Yanks rookie chokes at Fenway. A loyal Red Sox Nation partisan, deep behind enemy lines, had attempted to curse the Evil Empire’s new Death Star. Did it fail? We’ll the NY Post tell the tale:
The Yankees officially reversed the jersey curse yesterday - extracting from the new stadium’s concrete a David Ortiz shirt planted by a Red Sox-obsessed hardhat hoping to hex his team’s arch rivals
Then they warned the traitorous construction worker, Gino Castignoli, to watch his back, saying criminal and civil charges could be on deck.
“I spoke with a [prosecutor]. There may be criminal issues,” Yankee Chief Operating Officer Lonn Trost said.
Trost speculated that Castignoli could be on the hook for criminal mischief.
A spokesman for the Bronx district attorney said, “We can’t speculate” on possible charges.
Trost said that even if Castignoli ends up safe from charges, “we’re thinking of a civil case, looking for money damages.”
Yesterday’s excavation alone cost the team $50,000, Trost said, even though the actual digging took two workers just 15 minutes.
The jersey was partially unearthed Saturday after five hours of digging at the site near a planned restaurant behind home plate.
It had been buried two feet beneath the surface.
The recovery did double duty - not only taking the hex off the Yankees, but also putting one on Ortiz. The Red Sox kept the slumping slugger out of the starting lineup for last night’s game against the Bombers, saying he was taking a “mental day off.”
Hex off? We’ll let the NY Daily News tell it: 8-5 Boston. Even with Ortiz and Lowell out and an underperforming Matsuzaki on the mound, the Yanks had an ugly 1st inning and an uglier 3rd. Here’s some of that curse reversal, after the rookie Hughes, 21, was yanked in the bloody 3rd. Poor kid. It was painful to watch, even for Sox fans. Herald art below, story here:
If I were Steinbrenner, I don’t know that I’d tempt fate by suing a fan with cement dust under his fingernails.
Castignoli, a self-professed Yankee hater, yesterday said he had spent just one day on the site, working strictly to plant the jersey. “A lot of my friends work there, and they said it was easy work,” he said outside his Bronx home. “I told them I wouldn’t work there, but then one day a few months later, I said, ‘I could just go and jinx that stadium.’ ”
Castignoli said workers at the site long knew of his devilish doings.
“Anybody with half a brain knows it was all done in fun,” he said.
“I didn’t hurt nobody.”
An unlikely Messiah of Red Sox Nation is scoffing at reports the Yankees may pursue criminal charges against him for cementing a David Ortiz jersey he “cursed” into their new $1.3 billion stadium.
“It’s typical Yankees,” said Bronx-born Local 780 cement mason Gino Castignoli.
“It’s not like I snuck in there. It didn’t do any structural damage. I didn’t put anyone in harm’s way,” Castignoli, 46, told the Herald from New York yesterday.
Hardhats spent five hours Saturday rooting in concrete near the third-base line of the nearly complete Major League mecca with jackhammers in search of the voodooed V-neck. The Big Papi pullover was removed yesterday.
Yankees Chief Operating Officer Lonn Trost told Associated Press the team has discussed possible criminal charges against Castignoli with the district attorney’s office.
“We will take appropriate action since fortunately we do know the name of the individual,” Trost said.
Castignoli planted the shirt in 2 feet of concrete last year, damning the Bronx Bombers to be barren of another World Series championship for the next 30 years.
“If they spent as much time looking for Jimmy Hoffa as they did this T-shirt, they probably would have found him a long time ago,” Boston defense attorney Jeffrey Denner said of the slain labor leader long rumored to be buried in New York Giants Stadium.
After 85 years, the “House That Ruth Built” is being replaced by construction on the house Castignoli, a married father of two, frightened one of the greatest dynasties in sports history into grinding to a halt over superstition.
But who’d have thought a native New Yorker would be the one to give the Sox the shirt off his back?
“He’s a child that if he believes in something he sticks with it. He always did. That’s his nature,” Lucy Castignoli, a Yankees fan, said of her rogue son.
Yanks diehard Anthony Chiodi, 41, who grew up in the Bronx with Castignoli and has learned to live with his unflappable allegiance to Boston, vowed he’ll “jump ship,” too, if George Steinbrenner hauls his pal into court.
“They’ve been saying for a week there’s no such thing as a hex. If it didn’t mean anything, why’d they dig it up?” asked Chiodi. “He’s (Castignoli) going to be a hero in Boston.”
Castignoli lost his heart to the Sox in 1975 when, as a kid, he idolized power slugger Jim Rice.
He said his union had been after him to work on the new stadium, scheduled to open next season, but, “I would not go near Yankee Stadium, not for all the hot dogs in the world,” Castignoli said.
Finally, Castignoli relented. His deliciously devious plan in place - and No. 34’s jersey on his back - he worked the site for exactly one day and no more.
“It was worth it,” he said.
Denner, who is not involved in the dispute, said it’s possible the Yankees could go after Castignoli for breach of contract, but he wouldn’t advise it.
“I think the Yankees are a bad joke to begin with and shouldn’t make themselves look worse,” he said.
Sox spokesman John Blake declined to comment on the Yanks’ nerves of noodles except to say that if the team makes good on its promise to donate the shirt to the Boston Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Jimmy Fund, “If some good can come from this, it’s a real plus.”
Said Castignoli, “They should have left (the shirt) in there. They’ll probably use the money to pay off A-Rod’s contract.”
Despite planning to castigate Castignoli, Yanks President Randy Levine explains he hopes to reverse the curse by donating the hated jersey’s to the Sox’ favorite charity. The Jimmy Fund. via ESPN:
Levine said the shirt would be cleaned up and sent to the Jimmy Fund, a charity affiliated with Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Along with that, New York will send a Yankees Universe T-shirt, which is sold to benefit Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
“Hopefully the Jimmy Fund will auction it off and we’ll take the act that was a very, very bad act and turn it into something beautiful,” he said.
Yeah, that’s nice. Something beautiful will be that crusty shirt on display at Fenway.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 7:36 am on Monday, April 14, 2008
4 Responses to “Valiant Effort”
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April 14th, 2008 at 8:30 am
y’all need to get out more.
April 14th, 2008 at 10:05 am
So many things wrong with this.
Criminal charges for a guy who threw a shirt under some concrete? If the city wants to waste time and money digging it out, that’s their problem, but the idea of charging the guy with a criminal offense is ridiculous.
Also, 50K for 15 minutes of digging? What a joke.
April 14th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
This reminds me of the shoes two construction workers stuck in one of the concrete modules of the Hoover Dam… leading to the deathless legend that there are bodies buried in the concrete of the dam.
April 14th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I’d have left the Ortiz jersey in there, noting that it was a sign that the Yankees have buried any remnants of Sox dominance.