Grady Little was trying to manage a crisis again last month. Now working as a senior advisor to the Pittsburgh Pirates front office and living near Charlotte, North Carolina, the former Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers manager and his wife opened their home to friends fleeing the coast as Hurricane Florence approached. After the storm passed, Little paused to consider the far less dire tempest in which he found himself embroiled 15 years ago, when decisions made—and not made—conspired to perpetuate two of the most storied curses in sports.
"At the time we were playing the seventh game of the ALCS in Yankee Stadium when I made this thing that's gonna dictate my legacy forever: I left a pitcher in a game a little bit too long," he says.