I read a story Monday suggesting that Philadelphia in general and the Phillies in particular are cursed. You know, like there's some supernatural reason why their professional sports franchises have had an epic aversion to championships.

It's got to be something spooky and vaguely occultish because somebody made something up after noticing something you could relate to the condition of the city's major-sports teams.

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Rich Kane/US Presswire

Even the power of Cole Hamels couldn't stop Mother Nature from perpetuating "The Curse."

This Philly thing, apparently, is the Curse of Billy Penn, enacted after the completion of the first building taller than the William Penn statue (548 feet) atop City Hall. The taller building was completed in 1987, four years after the 76ers won the NBA title -- the city's last major championship.

So a building was built taller than a statue, four years after the last title, and therefore … a curse ever since! The more I write about it, the more I might start to believe it.

Besides, I dare you to prove it wrong. See, you can't, so it must be true.

It can't be something as mundane as a run of poor teams and poor management. It couldn't have anything to do with simply never being the best team in a sport during any particular year. There have been Super Bowl appearances and World Series appearances and NBA Finals appearances, but the city's losses are simply more proof that Billy Penn did something nefarious from atop his no-longer-so-lofty perch.

Everybody wants to be special. If you can't be special in winning, then be special in losing -- or at least pretend to be. Everybody wants to brand their suffering as worse than anybody else's, worthy of inclusion in the everlasting joyous misery of Club Cub.

Hey, everybody -- look at how bad we are, and how poorly we handle it.

It's almost better than winning.

So it's been 28 years since the Phillies won a World Series? Tell it to an Indians fan. To them, 28 years without a championship is called a hot streak. How about the Giants? They haven't won a World Series since they were in New York. To them, saying you haven't won in 28 years is like saying you had a rough spring training.

But if it makes you feel better -- or worse -- call it a curse. Blame it on a statue. And if the Phillies win one of the next three, it just means Billy hates Florida more than a building that had the audacity to be taller than him.

This Week's List

• Look, Bud, it's not that hard to play "Beat the Meteorologist": Go back to the 154-game regular season, cut out the made-for-TV off days during the division series, and be done with the season by Oct. 20.

• And one other note from out here in Real America: Our God-loving young'uns need to get to bed by 9 or else the crops'll go bad.

• Mr. Scott Kazmir, you might have been a little confused with the strike zone during Game 5 on Monday night, so here's my analysis: A strike is defined as a pitch that happened to pass through wherever Jeff Kellogg's eyes happened to be looking at the time.

• Sounds a little like socialism, to be honest with you: The umpires' collective bargaining agreement prohibits umpires from working consecutive World Series, regardless of competence.

• Just for the heck of it: Paul Sorrento.

• Rays-Phillies trivia: Abreu for Stocker.

• Yeah, maybe, but you have to factor in the competition -- nonstop infomercials for dating services and unnecessary household appliances: It was viewed as yet another sign of baseball's pending demise when Saturday's Game 3 of the World Series -- you know, the one that started at 10 p.m. Eastern and ended near 2 a.m. -- received the worst television ratings ever for a Series game.

• Worst new slogan for baseball: Cheap runs.

• Definition, near as I can gather from the guys on my TV: A cheap run is any run that scores by any manner other than a home run.

• Oh, and new play-by-play twist that doesn't work: A ground ball to short -- or anywhere else -- is now described as a hitter "checking" on the shortstop.

• The only thing this guy is missing is a catchy nickname: Chiefs running back Larry Johnson has been accused of assaulting a woman by spitting a drink in her face at a nightclub, the fourth such accusation against Johnson in five years.

• And finally, the only question the football world has is this -- will it be enough to inspire the troops to beat Washington State? Tyrone Willingham says he will resign as head football coach at Washington at the end of the season.

ESPN The Magazine senior writer Tim Keown co-wrote Josh Hamilton's autobiography, "Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back," which is available now on Amazon.com. Sound off to Tim here.