The Z Bra: an Artifact of a Once Cursed Culture

I was stuffed in a middle seat heading to Boston for Game 1 of this year’s World Series. I got a text from my Dad.

“Hope you packed the Z Bra.”

I had a little chuckle. The Z Bra was a contraption I built in 2004 during the ALCS between the Red Sox and the Yankees. It was a kind of medical tape that I would wrap over my little titties, a sharp diagonal over my stomach, then I would finish off the wrap around my belly button. It formed a Z. It was stupid. We’ll talk about it later.

I spent my childhood in San Diego, stationed in the New England Embassy. I’ve spent time in other homes and I’ve seen the cultures other people were embedded in, and they weren’t any more immersive than living in a home with New England roots.

What is New England culture? Many things. It’s assumed knowledge of every subject. It’s infinite skepticism of anything you yourself did not say. It’s holding strangers at arms length and family within arms reach.

Most importantly it’s an unhealthy integration of sports into your daily life. A New England bred human looks at life through the lens of how their sports teams did that day.

My Dad had a beeper that would feed him score updates for his teams. For a majority of my childhood, everyone except the Red Sox sucked. So updates for the Celtics, Bruins, and Pats were normally muted, tragic even. But Red Sox updates were different. One, it always felt like the Red Sox were playing. Two, it always felt like they had a shot. Or maybe it sounded like they did. I got a lot of information from my Dad, whose forecasts for sports teams could be its own fantasy series.

When my Dad flipped open the beeper, I would grip my car seat in waiting for an update. The reaction was always loud.

“THERE WE GO BABY.” A win. Probably a win that prolongs a win streak.

“FUCK.” A loss.

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.” We lost to the Orioles or some other shitty team.

“FUCK…FUCK.” Yankees beat us.

“FUCK YOU.” We beat the Yankees!

From the score update on, the day continued knowing what happened. Days when the Red Sox won were always easier. If it was a playoff win, things like ice cream were in play.

Days when the Red Sox lost were harder. I suddenly had more chores. I wasn’t “applying myself”. During losing streaks my Dad would say things like “You’re too old for Legos.”

Once I got a computer I didn’t need my Dad’s updates. I was yelling obscenities all by myself. I was able to feel my own pain. I was able to ruin my day on my own.

The Red Sox were my entry into a culture of momentary optimism timed by waves of crushing defeat. And by comparison I didn’t have the defeat for long: My father had ’86, ‘75*, and ’67. My grandfather had those and ’46. And I am only talking about World Series defeats.

*While doing a little research, I remembered that when I was like, seven years old, my Dad had me watch a documentary about the 1975 World Series. He didn’t tell me how it ended. The Red Sox lose. I locked myself in my room and refused to come out until I got hungry, and then I cried through dinner. The only thing that made me feel better is my Dad told me that Pete Rose was banned from baseball.

My rock bottom was ’03 when Yankee Fuck Aaron Boone hit a walk-off homer in Game 7 of the ALCS. Before that, optimism, even pragmatism could have won over. Just didn’t have it this year. We’ll have it next year. When that ball came off the bat, I can still remember sitting on the floor of our living room and feeling a suffocating sensation. We were cursed.

At this time I was already cursed. I was an eighth grader who was experiencing none of the fun parts of puberty. My baby fat was not getting stretched and thinned by a growing body. Instead, my fat expanded and grew pimples. I had, like, an unreasonable amount of pubic hair. In an effort to bleach my hair like fellow angry person Eminem, I turned my hair bright orange. When Aaron Boone rounded the bases it was just another reminder that I belonged to a clan born to suffer.

The next year felt incrementally better. I was in highschool. I was a little skinner. My Dad finally let me have a razor so I could shave my pubes. But I still felt everything was going to come crashing down and the Red Sox validated my suspicions. We were down 0–3 to the Yankees in the ALCS and Game 3’s 19–8 score made me consider becoming a monk or whatever type of person is not allowed to watch TV.

While watching Game 4, I tried to soften the blow of our inevitable defeat with some levity. So I took my shirt off — how all comedy should start — and I put some medical tape around my tits. My stepmom laughed, my Dad didn’t shut it down immediately, so I got to parade around the house in what became known as the Z Bra. While I am performing my burlesque show, Mueller hits a single to bring in Dave Roberts from second. Tie game that goes into extra innings.

My Dad was looking around his house for things that were different. Is this different? Or was this just the water pulling off the shore to create another tidal wave of crushing defeat? What he sees is his sweaty, shirtless son’s titties being pulled together by medical tape.

“Keep that shit on.”

I did. And in the 12th, David Ortiz hits a walk-off homer to give us our first win of the series.

It was still only one game, and the Yankees needed one win to end the series, so we were cautiously optimistic. But there was one clear order from my Dad.

“You don’t take that shit off.”

I wore this stupid fucking thing everywhere. I started to chafe and bleed under my armpits. But the Red Sox kept winning. So I had to wear it. My Dad arranged everyone in the seat they were sitting in the night before. Except me. My only assignment was to pop my shirt off and show Joe Buck my bandages. I watched every game shirtless, rubbing my titties whenever we scored. I always made sure my nipples were covered because I convinced myself that the Z Bra only worked if I was chaste. From an 0–3 deficit, the Red Sox won the series, earning a spot in the World Series.

All rules in our house were gone for the night. My older brother and I were openly drinking. My four year old brother’s bedtime was thrown entirely out the window. If I wanted to have a dog fighting ring I would have gotten minimal pushback. We felt free. We felt the curse leave us. Now this could have all been a set up for another World Series loss, another heartbreak, another crawling back into the icy grip of The Bambino. But even us, a nation cursed, knew that the Baseball Gods gave us their final test. We had to climb from Hell to beat the Yankees. And we did.

That year I went to Game 1 of the World Series in Boston. I brought the Z Bra. It was low 40s and my nipples poked hard against the bandage material so whenever I would jump and celebrate it came with a price. I had bloody nipples for the back half of October. The Sox swept the Cardinals. The curse was officially, officially broken. If I could go back, I’d do it all the same. I never have needed my nipples for anything other than when I pretend to breastfeed my dog.

Fourteen years later, sitting in the same seat in Fenway Park, I let my nipples go free this time. I was worried, but I was a grown man now. A married man. The curse was broken in ’04. And with the breaking of the curse comes the lifting of the burden.

But it never fully leaves you. In Game 4 of this year’s World Series, my wife went to bed after the 14th inning. Around 1AM, Dodger Max Muncy hit a walk-off homer in the 18th inning. I turned the game off and walked to the medical cabinet. After rummaging around for a few seconds, I determined that we did not have any medical tape. Before I remembered to get some the next day, we had already won Game 5.