At Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, the Kansas City Chiefs are unbeaten, and Hawaii-born construction worker Gerard DeCosta
believes that may be related to him.
Although DeCosta is over 4,000 miles away from Kansas City, he is an avid supporter of the team, and the Chiefs have a long-standing,
acrimonious rivalry with the Las Vegas Raiders. His employer put him to work on a new stadium the Raiders, the loathed team, were
building in Las Vegas towards the end of 2017.
“As soon as I got the opportunity, I knew what I had planned already,” DeCosta says.
The idea was to bury a “Chiefs Kingdom” flag beneath the home field of the opposition team. Cast a curse on those who oppose you.
A tweet appeared with a picture of DeCosta wearing a white hardhat.
Everything went crazy.
“I received a call from the Raiders president when this first happened. “Did you see what’s going on with social media?” he asks.
Tommy White, the business manager and secretary treasurer of Laborers Union Local 872 in Las Vegas, recalls, “Did they actually
plant this flag at the stadium?
White made an effort to convince Mark Davis, the owner of the Raiders, that this was not feasible. Subsequently, he proceeded to
locate and address this Chiefs flag agitator who was conducting illegal excavation.
“After finding him, I asked, ‘Gerard, did you really dig up this flag?'” ‘I’m not going say I did, or I didn’t,’ he says. I said, “Hey, see, this
is
White insisted on seeing the offending flag. DeCosta created a flag identical to the one shown in the picture. (Similar flags aren’t
particularly scarce—they presently sell for roughly $14 on eBay.) DeCosta, though, is furious with what he did with The Flag. On being
questioned, he claims to be “pleading the Fifth.”
Nevertheless, since Allegiant Stadium opened in 2020, the Raiders have never defeated the Chiefs at home. In other words, if there is a
curse, it is working, and from the perspective of many Boston and Chicago supporters, this is not the first time.
There was the Curse of the Bambino for Boston. In a trade with the Yankees, Babe Ruth delivered a blow to the Red Sox, moving him
to
In 1945, the Chicago Cubs encountered the Billy Goat Curse. When a bar owner brought his foul-smelling goat into a World Series
game, Wrigley Field banned him. As he left, he yelled, “Those Cubs, they aint gon’ win no more.” The Cubs lost the series after blowing
a two-game lead. After 108 years, they were able to finally win the World Series in 2016.
White is positive Allegiant Stadium is curse-free, but he can see why so many people want to believe in magic hidden beneath the
ground.
“It seems like everyone likes to think they are part of a conspiracy? It would be so nice to go back and declare that the Raiders ought to
have won a few of those games. In other words, they
White claims that there won’t be any extra lucky charms for the Chiefs in the big game. In fact, he believes that the Chiefs will most
likely be the target of any small placed curses that are in effect at Allegiant Stadium on Sunday.
After all, when Kansas City attempts to defeat the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl 58, it will be using the Raiders’ field and locker
room. [NPR Copyright 2024]
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