If you were going to start the work of reversing a curse...

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I guess it would look something like this. You’d want to make sure you built on your lengthy series record of costly baserunning and fielding mistakes, glove-clanking non-catches in the field, endless choke-jobs with runners in scoring position, all in an elimination game against the World Champs in their fabled yard. You’d definitely want things to go extra innings, have Frankie load the bases with the walkoff run at 3B.... And then, miraculously, Mike Napoli demonstrates that this is not your father’s slap-hitting Angels team. Erick Aybar ends his series oh-fer with a game-winning hit, Chone Figgins flashes some Graig Nettles-level leather, and Jered Weaver looks like a world-beater.

The odds are still terrible, the deck is still stacked, but if you were going to remove a king-sized monkey from your back, wouldn’t it require the scrappy yanking victory from the jaws of a self-inflicted defeat in an elimination game?

-- Matt Welch

Matt Welch is editor of Reason magazine.