As one of the very last people in the contiguous 48 states to admit that the Anaheim Angels are capable of escaping their own history, your correspondent wonders how this news might affect the Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox or Boston Red Sox.

Then again, the beautiful thing about history, even unpleasant history, is that it never goes away. That's why they call it history.

	Jarrod Washburn and the Angels have surprised teams in the AL West this season.

It seems clear, even to those of us who have maintained that the Angels are hopelessly doomed by the nature of their Angel-hood, that these Angels have remarkably little Angel-itude in their attitudes.

Their freshly completed three-game slapfest with the improbable Oakland Athletics was the golden opportunity for the Angels to go all, well, Angel, and they didn't. In fact, they showed precisely the kind of "We'll tell you when you've beaten us, and until we do, you haven't'' that is antithetical to the whole Angel experience. It is every bit as remarkable that the Angels played nearly .800 ball in the time that the A's were playing .950 ball as the fact that the A's were playing .950 ball at all. Not being scared by a team that never loses ... that's as two fingers-up as it gets.

Which brings us to the here and now, and the knowledge that there is still time for the Angels to Angel up, as it were. They can still go down the gurgler, miss the playoffs, or worse, make them and then fire up a hairball. That is the Angel experience as we know it, and funny things happen in the final three weeks of any baseball season.

But however strong the Angel curse might be, it is now the position of this squalid corner of your Internet experience that the curse is irrelevant to this team's immediate future. These Angels could actually beat the reaper, and we're not ashamed to be the last people to admit it.

And there are advantages to being last. For one, if it all goes bad, we can be the first ones off.

But if the Angels really finish the deal, then the ramifications for teams who use their histories as the prime excuse for their futures are monumental.

And you know who you are. The Cubs, 94 years sans title and running ... the White Sox, 85 years plus one in which they deliberately lost ... the Red Sox, 84 years and all the angst New England can eat ... the Indians, 54 years ... the Giants, 48. All teams for whom not winning the championship has become more than mere habit.

If the Angels (41 years, or one postseason win every seven years) can beat the spread, then the Cubs and Sox-times-two and Indians and Giants have no more historical excuses. Their devoted and profoundly addled fans cannot point wistfully to the good days before most of them were born and say, "If only ... ''

They would have to look at this odd lot in Disneyville and face the cruel fact that history is only an adequate crutch for awhile. They would have to look at the manager, Mike Scioiscia, nobody thought was managerial timbre until he became one ... the short stop, David Eckstein, nobody thought would ever stop working the 7-11 ... the center fielder, Garret Anderson, who was just one more Anderson running around out there ... oh, and Troy Percival, and all the other happy Angels trying not to look past page 220 in the media guide.

That's the part that begins the team's historical section.

Not that history doesn't have its uses. In a profoundly odd American League postseason, the Angels are the cuddliest group in the field. The Yankees, you know about. The Twins, endangered species though they might be, have won two World Series in the past 15 years. The A's, payroll-challenged but historically rich.

And then the Angels, cursed by their Angel-hood for so long, and yet oddly ennobled by it.

That is, as long as it goes right for them. If not, there are those who still claim the curse is too powerful to overcome. And technically, they will be right.

But at least it won't be such a compelling excuse any more.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com