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September 26, 2008

Strange But True!

Q. Why so much superstition among baseball players? What did former Yankee pitcher Don Larsen have to say on the matter? What do psychologists have to say?

A. Athletes in many sports will wear lucky socks or engage in other forms of magical thinking, but baseball players are particularly susceptible because they have so little control over their day-to-day fate, say Tom Valeo and Lindsay Beyerstein in “Your Brain on Cubs: Inside the Heads of Players and Fans.” And, say psychologists, if a player believes those socks will improve his performance, chances are he'll play with more confidence (a “placebo effect”). So is that why Boston's Wade Boggs won five batting titles? Boggs himself credited the chicken he ate before every game, plus his habit of leaving for the ballpark at exactly 1:47 for a 7:05 game, and on and on. Cleveland Indians' (and former Mariners manager) Mike Hargrove performed so many little batting rituals that he was dubbed “the human rain delay.”


 
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