Purgatory of the Seattle Sports Fan

With the Curse of the Bambino now dispatched, a nation turns its lonely eyes to other implosion-prone franchises. Fortunately, my hometown of Seattle provides a curse of a different sort. I would love someone to explain the mystery of why Seattle always has one good professional sports franchise, one mediocre, and one dismal team.

The Sonics, Mariners and Seahawks are a big O-fer when it comes to league championships during my lifetime, and the team everybody expects to go all the way invariably self-destructs. Witness the Sonics inexplicable collapse in round one of the 1994 playoffs versus the eighth-seeded Nuggets. Or the 116-win 2001 Mariners anemic demise in that year's playoffs.

The year 2004 is a textbook example: the Mariners lose 99 games, the Seahawks (early favorites to be Superbowl bound) are mired at 6-5 after losses to Buffalo and Arizona(!), and the SuperSonics have come out of nowhere to grab the NBA's best record (13 and 2, as of this writing).

Is this trend an illusion, like clutch hitting, or is the Jet City, dare I say it, cursed? Something to ponder as you enjoy your double, tall, half-caf mochachino.