April 14, 2008 in Sports

Crew removes jersey after attempted curse

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NEW YORK – A construction worker’s bid to curse the Yankees by planting a Red Sox jersey in their new stadium was foiled Sunday when the team removed the offending shirt from its burial spot in the ballpark.

After locating the shirt in a service corridor behind what will be a restaurant in the new Yankee Stadium, construction workers jackhammered through the remaining concrete Sunday and pulled it out.

The team learned that a Sox-rooting construction worker had buried a shirt in the stadium from a report in the New York Post on Friday, team officials said.

On Saturday, construction workers who remembered the employee – Gino Castignoli – phoned in tips about the shirt’s location.

It took about five hours of drilling Saturday to locate the shirt under 2 feet of concrete, he said.

Now in shreds from the jackhammers, the shirt still bore “Red Sox” on the front. It was a David Ortiz jersey, No. 34.

Yankees president Randy Levine said the shirt would be cleaned up and sent to the Jimmy Fund, a charity affiliated with Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

“Hopefully the Jimmy Fund will auction it off and we’ll take the act that was a very, very bad act and turn it into something beautiful,” Levine said.

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