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"It's just a coincidence," Ruth's 86-year-old daughter, Julia Stevens, told the New York Post last week. "Daddy would have never put a curse on his old team. He enjoyed his time playing for Boston too much.

"Daddy will always be a Yankee fan," Stevens said. "But I think he'd understand me pulling for the Red Sox."

The Curse of Superman: The mysterious death of TV's original Superman, George Reeves, shocked Hollywood. Down on his luck and contemplating a career in professional wrestling, Reeves was found in his Hollywood home on June 16, 1959, with fatal bullet wounds and a .38-caliber handgun by his side.

A coroner said the Man of Steel committed suicide, but some believe Reeves was murdered, possibly because of an affair with the wife of a powerful film producer. That's the subject of a forthcoming film, Truth, Justice and the American Way.

Fear of a Superman curse started to brew when famed big-screen Superman Christopher Reeve broke his neck in 1995 while riding a horse. He was left paralyzed.

What's more, Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane, suffered a nervous breakdown, and Richard Pryor began showing signs of multiple sclerosis after appearing in Superman III.

According to one theory, American Indian spirits cursed actors who play Superman as a result of the way they were treated by the white man.

But let's leap over the Superman curse in a single bound. The big screen's first man of steel, Kirk Alyn, lived to the ripe old age of 88.

Still, there are fates worse than death, especially for an actor. In 1987, a year before his death, Alyn laughed about a professional curse — being typecast.