On a warm, sunny Saturday, I walked down to the softball field to see our team play Sonoma State. I arrived with my typical tardiness and we were winning 5-2 in the last inning of the first game of the doubleheader.
Before I could even congratulate myself for at least being able to see us close out a win against the Cossacks, BAM! SSU single. BAM! Single. BAM! Double. Before I knew it, the game was tied, then it was lost, all in the span of minutes since I got to the game.
The Guardian writer covering the game jokingly mentioned I was bad luck to the team, which I shrugged off. However, I then remembered high school, when every time a certain player’s mom was at one of our games I played badly. OK, I played badly a lot, even when she wasn’t there, but especially when she was watching. I don’t know what it was, or even whose mom she was, but I can still hear her grating voice, trying to cheer us on but immensely distracting me when I was at bat.
The superstitious world of sports is a funny place, a place where the most intelligent, mature people fall prey to the most idiotic notions.
Athletes, whose lives hinge on performance, will maintain just about anything as long it will let them think they will continue to produce.
All baseball players believe it is bad luck to step on foul lines; however, it is good luck to step on the base when running out to your position in the field.
In basketball, when shooting around during warm-ups, if a player ends with a missed basket they’ll have a bad game.
Hockey players tap their goalie’s shinguards with their sticks as a pregame ritual.
Pitchers throwing no-hitters are generally not spoken to in the dugout, and no one under any circumstances is supposed to mention the no-hitter in progress.
Superstition and sports have been indistinguishable forever, as athletes find solace and comfort in repetition. Even those who must realize the futility of their illogical actions still must uphold these traditions.
New York Mets pitcher Turk Wendell brushes his teeth and chews licorice between every inning. Wade Boggs used to eat only chicken on game days.
Even if an individual doesn’t believe in superstition, he is part of a team that is guaranteed to have one or many players who do believe and must follow these traditions.
Crash Davis said it best in “”Bull Durham,”” one of the greatest baseball movies ever, when he told the young rookie pitcher, “”Never fuck with a winning streak.”” Of course, he meant for him not to have sex because the anemic Durham Bulls had actually won their first games of the season. But that just goes to show how far these superstitions extend, and the duty players have to observe them.
It is superstition that gives sports character, that blurs the line between sports and reality just a little bit more. Everybody has traditions, habits and traits that they employ daily.
Yet athletes are set apart from those, in that they actually believe not necessarily in the connection between their superstition and performance but between the effect of believing and their performance.
Athletes know that the traditions won’t do anything by themselves, but that they require a willing suspension of belief in the magic of that favorite undershirt they always wear, the lucky socks turned inside out, the tug on the cap before every pitch, or the tap on the doorway running out of the locker room.
People in the real world don’t follow traditions because of belief in the magic, they follow them because somewhere along the way their superstition became integrated into their daily routine, and so they will get a cappuccino every morning at Starbucks, they’ll always carry their briefcase in their left hand, or they’ll wear the same shirt every Friday. But there’s no magic in it. The daily regime of life has robbed the tradition of volume and character.
However, I still believe in superstition. I don’t step on foul lines. I have a lucky undershirt I wear when I play baseball. As for Davis’ advice, I’ve been an unwilling suscriber of that credo for awhile.
So I left the game to walk over and watch my friend’s intramural soccer team play in its semifinal game (which was won on penalty kicks, go Whompin’ Wallabies). Incidentally, the softball team won the next game 7-0 in my absence. Go figure.