Superstition and Tradition Options

[Lucen]

Anyone who was in yesterday's gamethread is aware of my 8th inning snafu. You don't mention the words "no hitter" in the midst of a developing no hitter. My personal feelings on the matter not withstanding, I thought I'd open up a forum for discussion on particular baseball superstitions and traditions, and why they're important, even today in an age where we break down the game into such complicated and even convoluted ways. One might think that as our understanding of the game from a statistical and scientific perspective increased, our reliance and indulgence in superstition might fade away, but obviously this is not the case. And superstitions aren't just left to the fans... pitchers will avoid stepping on the chalk heading to and from the dugout when pitching well, Nomar has to go through the same ritual every at bat, individual players have to go through the same motions before each game...

And from the fan perspective, some of us will sit perfectly still for an entire inning, worried that we might jinx the players we root for, we wear the same shirt three days in a row to maintain the "karma" that led to a previous big win... we go to all manner of lengths to "aid" our favorite team when deep down, we know that we don't actually have an impact on the game while sitting at home watching. So what is it that makes these superstitions, these traditions so important to us, the collective fan?

Is it simply a mechanism to further entrench ourselves in the game, to make ourselves feel more a part of the action? Or is it something deeper? Personally, I experience this with my father a lot. Last weekend, while watching the last game of the Sox/Yanks series, after the Sox had taken the lead I got up to get a drink, then sat down in a different chair. My father berated me, saying we were going to lose the game because I had messed with the karma and jinxed us. When we lost, he continued to blame me and refused to discuss how good of a swing ARod had put on that pitch.

Now, my father has been a Sox fan for all his life. He saw a lot of "bad luck" and believed in the curse. I wonder if older fans who witnessed more of the tough times in the 20th century might be more prone to this kind of behavior. I'm 28, so I've seen my share, but nothing compared to my father or people of his generation. What does SoSH think? I'm genuinely interested in understanding this better.

Edit: I want to thank E5 Yaz for suggesting this thread in the first place while I was PMing him.

This post has been edited by Lucen: Jun 8 2007, 07:58 AM

[sass a thon]

This idea is known as Magical Thinking.

wiki goodness

In psychology and cognitive science, magical thinking is non-scientific causal reasoning (e.g. superstition). James George Frazer and Bronislaw K. Malinowski said that magic is more like science than religion, and that societies with magical beliefs often had separate religious beliefs and practices. Like science, magic is concerned with causal relations, but unlike science, it does not distinguish correlation from causation. For example, a man who has won a bowling competition in a given shirt may then believe this shirt is lucky. He will continue to wear the shirt to bowling competitions, and though he continues to win some and lose some, he will chalk up every win to his lucky shirt.

[kevlog]

It's very bizarre, really. The logical, somewhat intelligent part of my mind knows that superstitions make no sense. But somewhere in my mind I just can't ignore them. Just this morning a black cat crossed my path on the way to my bus and I couldn't help but wonder what bad thing would happen today. I also avoided walking under a ladder by the Park Square Building just five minutes ago...simply because I didn't want to 'tempt fate' or add to the already bad luck that will obviously be coming my way because of that damn cat.

Tonight I will be staying a hotel - and I'm fairly sure that if my room is on the thirteenth floor, my triskaidekaphobia will kick in. Obviously, the rational human being in me shouldn't let a silly number bother me, but I can't help it.

And you still wrecked Curt's no-hitter. Nice going.

[wade boggs chick...]

Apparently, it may be hard-wired in us.

[Lucen]

Two really interesting links so far. Thanks for the input. Here is a really interesting passage from the second link:

In fact, "the more risky and chancy the situation you are in, the more likely you are to be tuned in to superstitious behavior," Shermer said. "You are looking for control."

Superstition gives us that bit of control - even if it is simply perceived.

I think this is particularly interesting. "Looking for control."

And yeah, yeah. I owe G38 a beer... or free drinks for the rest of his life, depending on your perspective.

[LoweTek]

Well, (and I'm sure others around here have stories like this), after the win in game 4 of the '04 ALCS I took careful inventory of what I had done differently that evening from all the other games. I noted the different chair I was sitting in, the water bottle I was drinking from and the fact that it was the first time I hadn't shaved in the morning since the playoffs started. I told Mrs. Lowetek I wouldn't shave until they lost a game, would keep refilling that water bottle and sit in that chair. I hated that beard and it was a relief when the Twins finally beat them in a Spring game in early March of '05; after I'd had my WS Trophy pic taken with the beard. I still have the water bottle somewhere.

With its clear basis in scientific fact, this should answer your question.

[Lucen]

Getting quite a response from some lurkers... here we go:

ShortSox

Hey,

I'm a long-time lurker....good thread on superstitions. Between Bogg's chicken dinners and Curt's How-Many-Steps to the bullpen from the dug-out on gamedays, there is certainly much fodder for it.

Personally, I threw out a Sox jersey (cheap cotton though!) that I wore all through the 2003 playoffs. I don't regret it because I do feel that my actions had a some cosmic relation to the events that transpired in 2004. wink.gif

Anyhow, on a trivial note, if you'd like to shift some of the heat from your game thread snafu, check out Amalie Benjamin's post on the Extra Bases blog from the eighth inning. Since she is actually there, I'd say she is really the responsible party:

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/reds...till_going.html

June 07, 2007
Still going
By Amalie Benjamin, Globe Staff

This isn't Schilling at his best, certainly. He's had better days pitching, better stuff, but sometimes this is just the way it works in baseball...

One pitch, and Schilling got the first out of the eighth inning on a roller up the first base line by Jack Cust. Kevin Youkilis held his hand out, and took the ball to the base himself.

Schilling, in one of those shows of luck that have to show up in a no-hitter, stabbed one off the bat of Dan Johnson, and threw to Youkilis for the second out of the inning.

And, on his 90th pitch of the afternoon, Schilling got Marco Scutaro to line out to mid-range centerfield.

Eight in the books. No hits.


And my personal supersition? I do laundry doing an important game....never fails.

Have a good day,
ShortSox in Albany, NY

Heh, looks like she and I have something in common. Maybe I could use that as a pickup line.

Illegal Defense

Hi, thought you would find these articles interesting and relevant to your thread on superstition and tradition:

"Think You've Got Magical Powers": http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2007/...magical-powers/

"Red Sox Magic": http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2007/.../red-sox-magic/

Jibaholic

I'm a lurker so I can't post this, but I thought you might enjoy Simmons' take

Everyone saw the Red Sox blow that Game 6 at Shea, and yet I'm pretty sure no one could tell me who was to blame. Buckner? Stanley? Schiraldi? Nope. It was me: I called home and asked my mom to tape the final three outs. As I told her at the time, "I want to have it on tape when the Sox win the World Series."

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story...=simmons/030130

Thanks to everyone chiming in, especially the lurkers who take the time to PM me their thoughts. I'll try to get anyone else's thoughts on the matter up as I come across free time throughout the day.

[Lefty on the Mou...]

During game 7 of thr ALCS in 2003, a longtime buddy with whom I had watched game 7 of the 1986 WS called me when the Red Sox were up in the middle of the game to celebrate how we were going to win the game and get back to the WS. I told him not to get cocky and hung up. We all know how that one turned out!

The next day I called him and told him to NEVER call me in the middle of a game ever again!


as a side note:

Tonight I will be staying a hotel - and I'm fairly sure that if my room is on the thirteenth floor, my triskaidekaphobia will kick in. Obviously, the rational human being in me shouldn't let a silly number bother me, but I can't help it.

If the hotel numbers the thirteenth floor as the fourteenth floor, does your triskaidekaphobia still kick in, or is the label of the floor rather than the physical location the cause of the phobia?

[Deathofthebambin...]

Gamblers and Golfers. The superstitious activity that permeates everything that happens in a casino or on a golf course make Nomar's actions in the box seem normal in comparison.

[TheoShmeo]

Does anyone know how the "don't talk to or sit next to the pitcher during the no no" got started?

NESN flashed to Schilling with a lot of real estate on both sides of him before the ninth, and it occurred to me, as I'm sure it occurred to others, that departing from the normal behavior on the bench could create even more stress for the pitcher. I'm guessing that some player way back when said something about the no hitter to a pitcher who promptly gave up a hit, but the practice has always seemed odd to me.

[Bosoxen]

I am not a superstitious person, at all. I don't carry a rabbit's foot, and I don't worry about 13th floors, black cats, or broken mirrors. I avoid walking under ladders because it's dangerous, not because it's unlucky. But you put a baseball game on the television, and I turn into a friggin' voodoo child. I am extremely superstitious about baseball, and I really have no idea why. I get like that to a certain extent with other sports, but it's more pronounced with baseball. I don't talk about no-hitters and perfect games while they're happening, and I will get on people that do.

I fancy myself an intelligent person and a knowledgeable sports fan. But I still have a hard time shaking those tendencies. Perhaps it is a bit of what someone mentioned earlier, and it's a subconscious effort to try to get some control over a situation where I have no control. But it's also what I grew up with, so it makes it that much more difficult to get rid of it.

[kevlog]

or is the label of the floor rather than the physical location the cause of the phobia?

Oh, if you call it 14 then it's 14. No problem there. 13 simply ceases to exist. No biggie.

[Lucen]

From knuckledown49:

Hi there,

I'm a lurker and a grad student in Religion, and I thought your post regarding superstition in sports was a very interesting one. I've been thinking a lot about rituals based on my own experience in both religious studies and playing baseball recently. Rather than the whole "magical thinking explanation," I think there are two more valid explanations. However, a lot of this is based on how you view the game, whether it's a cosmic battle of good and evil or whether it's an experience that you can enjoy. In other words, if you live and die with every game or if you sit back after a few losses (see Oakland, for example) and tell yourself that the Sox aren't as bad as they played, with a play or two we would have won, etc.

The first explanation is the communal one, an effort to produce what Emile Durkheim named "effervescence". The idea is that a communal, ritually bound and created sacred space (like a baseball game) or sacred time (when you organize your evening around watching the game) brings people together. In this space and time, man is in commune with higher powers, the sacred, what have you, but more importantly (and disregarding metaphysical reality or allegory), they bind themselves together more tightly. So when something truly special like a no-hitter is going on, suddenly there is more at stake. Sacrality isn't a function of higher powers, but can be something that is outside the norm and which holds special consequences for the individual, whether positive or negative. Then we create a special language around it. If it was truly superstitious and magical-based thinking (a la Frazer), then we wouldn't feel the need to share it with others, yet because baseball is participated in by the players and the fans, we feel the need to share that experience. Effervescence is a powerful tool for creating society and community and is the same feeling you get when you participate in a religious ceremony. However, you can also get the same basic experience at a concert or sporting event, where you suddenly feel connected to the experience and the other participants. By codifying our superstitions (wearing the same article of clothing, not saying "no-hitter", etc) we aren't trying to create scientific efficacy but can instead recognize that we are participating in something greater than ourselves. Ritual helps to draw us deeper into that experience while not saying that we're ignoring our logical selves for something we know can't metaphysically change the results.

The other reason (and this pertains more to the players themselves) is that with a game that splits itself between individual and team achievement, superstition gives people something to hang their hats on when things are going wrong. Statistically, slumps are going to happen. However, if a player gets into a batting slump, he may get the urge to tinker with mechanics or completely change his approach at the plate, actions which could have disastrous consequences. As a friend of mine put it, "your body knows how to hit the ball, your brain is just getting in the way." Superstition allows a player to write off a cold streak or a bad game without having to change anything tangible about his approach. That way, when he suddenly breaks out of it, he claims it was based on only eating chicken, or voodoo ritual, or a lucky rabbit's foot, etc. Then when things go wrong again, that tool is discarded and another one takes its place. The same thing applies to fans. With such a long season and games almost every day, it would be far too easy to obsess over one particular bad experience and call for a manager's head or for the lineup to be shaken up, etc. The players are still the same, the game is still the same, chance or the circumstance of the opposing team is what differs. Rituals allow us to focus on something external to the game which still lets us participate in the natural ebb and flow of the season.

I have huge problems with Frazer as a scholar and as an anthropologist/religionist and I think that his whole idea of magical efficacy is intellectually lazy and demeans people who practice ritual. Especially in this thread, everyone says that they cognitively understand that what they are doing does not change the game itself, but their experience of it. Rituals and superstitions make us pay more attention to the details surrounding the experience and draw us deeper into participating in the game. In terms of most baseball fans, it's an experiential rather than a metaphysical explanation.

Anyway, that was probably needlessly wordy, but I really think that rituals and sacrality can be found in many other places besides houses of worship, and that such a framework makes experience considerably richer. If you think the sacred is anything that we consider to be valuable because it is powerful and different (like baseball players, or the game itself), then our relation to it becomes stronger by our subtle attempts to participate in it.

[jose melendez]

Glad to see someone else drawing the parallel between Durkheim's thoughts on religion and ritual and our love of the Sox. Ever since I read Durkheim my first semester of college, it was very clear to me that the phenomenon he described hit my Red Sox experience almost perfectly.

For Durkheim, the whole notion of religion and ritual is a form of societal self-worship, and I think that holds true for the Red Sox. The Red Sox are this totem, less obvious than a rabbit or what not, but a totem nonetheless, that represents us, Red Sox fans, New Englanders, whatever you have as a collective. Even though they don't have much more to do with us as individuals than a totemic rabbit does with some tribe, we still revel in their achievements and feel genuine emotion, pleasure and pain from their travails. The superstition, the ritual, is our way as fans to connect more deeply to the totem, to feel that we impact it, and that it acknowledges us.

Of course, Durkheim also said that as totemists, we should periodically have ecstatic orgies and eat the totem, and to me, Curt looks a little gamey.

[TallerThanPedroi...]

Was I the only one listening to the game on the radio yesterday? Joe and Glenn were going on and on about no hitters and perfect games and Schilling's career attempts, long before Amelie or Lucen did.

As for superstition and I am unoriginal and unfunny. Please put me out of my misery and all that, I think it's fun as long as it stays fun. Once people start getting mad and blaming people three time zones away for the simple fact that it's damn hard to retire 27 guys in a row, then it's just stupid.

[Harry Agganis]

Actually iwas listening to the game on the radio. Of course they were talking about no-no etc but they never were saying anything about this one. They would say no hits in another inning etc. Theystayed within no no superstition bounds by never mentioning the there was a no hitter in progress.

An aside I was listening in my office in Kansas my other sox fan walked by and said with 2 outs in the ninth Oh He has a no hitter and boom a hit. The twins fan across the hall came over in the seventh and conformed to the rules.

I called my daughter and asked if she had listen to the game. She said yes. I asked why she hadn't called. She said jesus Dad Schill had a no hitter going.

So based on the fact that this superstition had a unifying effect over two states and Between a 60yo, a 47 yo and a 20yo. I believe perpetuating the myth is certainly worthwhile. I will be taking my seven year old to his first Baseball game this summer and will immediately start transmitting the culture of baseball to him

By the way getting on the "non believers" is an integral part of the ritual.

This post has been edited by Harry Agganis: Jun 8 2007, 10:59 AM

[Worst Trade Evah]

Myth and ritual aside, I think there's a basic courtesy issue also. Even if you don't believe mentioning no-hitter affects the no-hitter -- everyone agrees by the way, so you get no special points for rationality here -- it's just a jerk move to insist on being the turd in the punchbowl over and over and over again when people have made it clear they don't appreciate it. And for what? So you could gloat about some silly prediction that Schilling would be a stopper? Gee, a Hall of Fame pitcher might pitch a good game -- there's a gutty prediction.

Nice post from the lurker about Durkheim.

This post has been edited by Worst Trade Evah: Jun 8 2007, 01:13 PM

[glennhoffmania]

Myth and ritual aside, I think there's a basic courtesy issue also. Even if you don't believe mentioning no-hitter affects the no-hitter -- everyone agrees by the way, so you get no special points for rationality here -- it's just a jerk move to insist on being the turd in the punchbowl over and over and over again when people have made it clear they don't appreciate it. And for what? So you could gloat about some silly prediction that Schilling would be a stopper? Gee, a Hall of Fame pitcher might pitch a good game -- there's a gutty prediction.

This is exactly the point I was trying to get at in the game thread but I didn't do it as well. It's one thing to not believe in the irrational concept of jinxing the pitcher. It's another thing to not respect the tradition that most people here follow. And it's yet another thing to continue to be an ass about it after several people get annoyed by that lack of respect. WTE nailed it- it's about basic courtesy, not myth and ritual.

[Lucen]

This is exactly the point I was trying to get at in the game thread but I didn't do it as well. It's one thing to not believe in the irrational concept of jinxing the pitcher. It's another thing to not respect the tradition that most people here follow. And it's yet another thing to continue to be an ass about it after several people get annoyed by that lack of respect. WTE nailed it- it's about basic courtesy, not myth and ritual.

I didn't start this thread to debate last night's incident. Let's leave that in the game thread please.

[singaporesoxfan]

I think baseball in particular is a sport in which trying too hard can be counterproductive - so superstitions help by allowing players to attribute bad streaks to nothing but dumb luck (as knuckledown49's post said).

I wonder where the line between superstition and obsessive-compulsive traits is drawn? I don't think of myself as superstitious, and yet I know I exhibit behaviours that could be described as obsessive-compulsive - needing to straighten out books in bookshelves, needing to touch door handles with both hands, that sort of thing. Nomar is famously obsessive-compulsive in his behaviour, and I wonder if what it takes to succeed in baseball (being able to do something the same way, many many times over) often lends itself to these kinds of rituals/behaviours.