Out Jinxing a Jinx

Jason Budden: Un-Common Sense?

So I’ve been watching more and more Baseball Tonight over the past few days. Not sure why I wasn’t catching it as often during the first few weeks of the Major League season. Maybe it was because my NCAA tournament bracket still had a chance to finish in the money. That chance didn’t last too long (thanks UCLA), but regardless, I caught a few of the Baseball Tonight shows on ESPN this weekend with Wade Boggs as a commentator and it got me thinking about baseball superstitions.

Boggs was one of the most superstitious players in baseball history. Most people know that he ate chicken before every game, but this was just the start. For all night games, Boggs sprinted toward third base at precisely 4:37, making sure to touch second base on the way, before taking warm-up ground balls. Boggs was always the first player out of the dugout to take his position for the start of the game. Once at his position, he found three pebbles (always three) in the dirt and tossed them off the field. He drew the letters for the Hebrew word chai, meaning life, in the dirt with his cleats before every at-bat. He chewed gum during the first at-bat of the night. If he got a hit, the gum stayed. If not, he tossed it.

How can anyone with common sense think that chewing gum has any affect on getting a base hit? Does any of this really work? Does it even matter? Not really. As long as you believe it works, then it works. In the long run, all of this superstition is just to help calm any nerves or doubts that an individual may have about their performance or their capabilities. Would Boggs have been a Hall of Famer without eating chicken every day? Probably, but that consistent rhythm was a calming factor in his life and put him in the right mindset to perform at a high level, leading to 3,010 hits and a career .328 batting average.

It is this “mindset” that led the Yankees to jackhammer into their newly built stadium in order to unearth a buried Red Sox jersey. Was it necessary…No! But it helped remove any chance that we hear about a “Curse of the Buried Red Sox Jersey” some 40 years down the line when the Yankees haven’t won another World Series.

I personally didn’t have any major superstitions back when I played ball, but I did hold my breath anytime I passed a cemetery, followed by a quick scratch of the car ceiling. Not sure where that one came from, but it seemed to make sense back when I was 12.