If you grew up on the Prairies playing a sport you’ve undoubtably seen some quirky superstitions, unfailing rituals and, in some cases, irrational routines prior to the game beginning.
I had three superstitions I followed religiously prior to a hockey game. I had to be the last player out of the dressing room, which was difficult at times, when teammates weren’t ready for warm up. I had to hit each post with my stick during the first lap of the warm up. Then, after we took the ice for the start of the game, I was the last player to touch the goalie in a specific pattern before the puck dropped.
Weird—yes.
But not even close to the level of superstition some players, coaches and teams have.
I started thinking about superstitions while watching the greatest ritual in sport during the Rugby World Cup. The nearly two month tournament made for some exciting footy but possibly the most compelling moving pictures from the event occurred prior to the start of every New Zealand game, when the All Blacks, led by Piri Weepu, would line up across from their opponents and perform the Haka, a traditional Maori war challenge.
Now if you grew up playing hockey, instead of rugby, you’ve known for a long time that goalies are some of the oddest creatures on the planet. The word shutout is a definite no-no during the course of a game, as if the mention of the word will somehow inevitable lead to a goal, cracking the goalie’s goose egg.
Patrick Roy use to talk to his posts during the course of a game. Roy said he wanted to make sure the posts were his friends in case a shot was out of his reach, then maybe his new found buddies would bail him out.
Tiger Woods owns the most famous red shirts in the professional sports world. Woods wears red on the final day of a tournament. The color red is based on Thai superstition, symbolizing aggressiveness. Woods’ mother is from Thailand. Essentially it has become his scoring shirt, no word on whether he wore the shirt during trips to Las Vegas.
Baseball might be the sport with the most superstitions. The Curse of the Bambino haunted the Boston Red Sox organization for 86 years, beginning when the Sox traded Babe Ruth in 1919 for a big bag of money. Since the trade the Yankees have won 26 world series, the Red Sox finally ended the curse in 2004.
Wade Boggs may have been the king of the superstitious. Boggs would field exactly 150 balls during fielding practice, only ate chicken on game days, took batting practice at 5:17 and did his sprints at exactly 7:17 prior to games.
Baseball’s version of the shutout in hockey is the no-hitter. During a potential no-hitter, around the sixth or seventh inning, teammates will stop speaking to the pitcher and will leave him looking like a man on an island in the dugout.
And who can forget Nomar Garciaparra. The Red Sox shortstop who would step out of the batter’s box after every pitch and go through a series of adjustments to his gloves, finishing with a couple of toe taps on the turf. The only thing comparable to Garciaparra’s unique routine might have been Sergio Garcia who would re-grip and waggle the golf club several times before finally making a swing. Both players were criticized within their respective sports from opposition who felt they were taking too long to play the game.
In basketball, Lebron James goes through his ritual of throwing talcum powder in the air before tip-off. The superstition is more dramatics than anything, while the oddest basketball ritual might have come from the greatest player of all time. Michael Jordan wore his shorts from his collegiate days at North Carolina under his Bulls shorts for his entire career, believing the shorts brought him good luck.
Some boxers abstain from sex up to three months preceding a fight. In England, national soccer team manager Fabio Capello banned wives and girlfriends from staying with players during the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Jim Leyland might have had the funniest—albeit dirtiest—superstition of 2011, when he decided to wear the same pair of underwear until his Detroit Tigers lost. The winning streak lasted 12 games, slightly longer than the streak in Leyland’s drawers, proving athletes and coaches will do anything to win.
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