Honestly, did the Yankees really think they had to dig up that jersey?

Maybe they want to start sticking pins in a Manny Ramirez doll while they're at it.

Sure, a Red Sox shirt has been extricated from near the foundation of what is slated to become a restaurant in the new Yankee Stadium. (And if that's not sacred ground, what is?) But it is quite possible that removing the shirt was precisely the wrong thing to do cursewise.

Not to mention psychologywise. As a Yankees fan, I'm not worried about this jersey, and they shouldn't be, either.

"I've talked to several fans who said we could easily have taken it the other way and said, 'This is how we are going to bury the Red Sox,'" Mickey Bradley, a co-author of "Haunted Baseball," said. "If the team really wanted to run with it, they could have gone out and gotten jerseys from every other team and buried them, too."

Now that would have been a truly baseballsy move.

Instead, timid team honchos spent $50,000 in digging fees to ensure curse control. Hey, fellas: How about showing those BoSox who's boss by believing in your team, instead? For gosh sakes, you've got the pope coming to bless the place! You really have your bases covered.

The problem with taking any kind of curse seriously (even while pretending you're not) is that a team that's this worried about witchery is a team that's worried, period.

Consider the 1970s treatise "Baseball Magic," by anthropologist George Gmelch. In studying the belief systems of baseball players, he found much more superstition in the infield than in the outfield.

In the infield, "we're talking about situations where there are more possibilities of error, and there are more precarious situations," explained another anthropologist, SUNY Buffalo professor Philip Stevens Jr. All that uncertainty is the perfect petri dish for superstition.

"But in the outfield, they have a lot of time to gauge the flight of the ball and their position," the professor continued. With that kind of control, the outfielders can rely on their skills, not magic, to win.

By trembling at the jinx of the jersey, the Yankees are saying they can't trust their skills to save them, and now some fans are agreeing. Sports psychologist Jay Granat said that if the jersey had stayed buried and the team tanked, "People would say, 'The shirt is acting up.'" So why not get rid of the "curse" before fans — and players — start believing in it?

Because it's better to get rid of the fear of the curse, that's why! After all, the Red Sox did.

Remember all those decades when the Red Sox were down and they blamed the "Curse of the Bambino"? It was an excuse, but it also seemed self-perpetuating. If you think you can't win, you can't — like in 1986.

That's the year they faced the Mets in the World Series. "The Red Sox were one out from winning the game that would have put the curse to rest," the other co-author of "Haunted Baseball," Dan Gordon, recalled. The Sox had won three games and had a two-run lead with two outs in the bottom of the 10th. Victory was nigh!

"Then," said Gordon, "Mookie Wilson hit a ground ball roller to first baseman Bill Buckner, and it bounced through his legs, and the Mets won that game."

The Mets went on to win Game 7, and Buckner moved to Idaho. But in 2004, the curse was broken. The Red Sox came back from a three-game deficit to win the American League Championship Series against none other than the Yankees. They went on to win the World Series. So this year, who got to throw out the first pitch of the season at Fenway?

Bill Buckner, who got a standing ovation.

That's a team — and fan base — that's not scared of any curse. So why are the Yankees?

Don't be afraid of the jersey, boys.

Lenore Skenazy is a columnist at The New York Sun and Advertising Age. To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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