The first time anybody talked about "The Curse of the Bambino," according to newspaper databases, was in 1989, when buzz started to build about an upcoming book of that title by Boston sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy. Before that, there had been scattered talk of the franchise curse, perhaps kicked off by this 1978 Red Smith column in The New York Times.
Smith tossed off the theory casually, a kicker to his column about the club's struggles on the road. But by 1986, when the Red Sox lost the World Series after a shocking and original sequence of flubs, the players had to answer for superstition: "I don't believe in that," reliever Joe Sambito said.