Cursed Baseball to Be Atomized

What
would motivate a baseball announcer turned restaurant to pay $113,842
for a baseball that represented one of the most painful and frustrating
sports moments of his career? And, after paying all that money, what
could motivate him to atomize that investment by subjecting it to intense
pressure, fire and explosives in a bulletproof tank on live television?

If the Restaurateur is the cross-culturally named Harry Carey, and
the baseball in question is the infamous Bartman Ball (for any foreign
readers not familiar with our national pastime, we are not making
up these names), the motivation is at least understandable.

Together with the Red Sox (there, we finally typed those six fateful
letters, and our computer didn’t crash) the Cubs are suffering from a
Baseball Curse which has kept them from the World Series since 1945.  This
year they came within one out of the Big Prize, failing due to fan Steve
Bartman reaching into the field of play and deflecting the baseball in
question.
According to Cubs fans, the baseball itself is cursed, and must be destroyed
to dissolve the curse. 

What ridiculousness! Who, in this modern age of digital enlightenment,
believes in such a thing as curses? Rumors to the contrary, the fact
that the Dowbrigade is taking a Babe Ruth Red Sox jersey down to Ecuador
next month, and into the territory
of the Huaorani indians, to attend a rarely performed ceremony with
a powerful blind Shaman featuring spiritual defenestration by powerful
psychic purgatives is purely part of our amateur anthropological research.

The cursed ball was pampered in its final hours.  It was feted
in a luxury hotel suite, featured this morning on the Today Show, and
presented
with a sumptuous last meal. Tonight, on live TV in Chicago, it will be
atomized. Hey, whatever works.

from CNN