My only feeling about superstition is that it’s unlucky to be behind at the end of the game.
– Duffy Daugherty, Michigan State football coach Did you notice how effectively I put a hex on the Atlanta Braves last week?
In my previous column, I predicted the Braves would catch the Mets and win the National League East. As soon as the paper went to press, the Braves lost three straight and Spencer Strider went on the IL.
“Nice going, Michael,” I said to myself. Because I knew better. I have a superpower that allows me to put a hex on teams I root for.
But it has not always been a negative superpower.
Years ago, before I became familiar with the tempestuous phantoms that live out along the ethereal plane and cause so much misery for sports fans, I toured the Mediterranean courtesy of Uncle Sam and came home with a bunch of Italian coins. A few Christmases later, I received a Georgia Tech piggy bank as a gift.
I put the Italian coins in the piggy bank, and one day in November I was watching Georgia Tech kick-off to Georgia in the annual “Clean Old-Fashioned Hate” game. The piggy bank was sitting on my coffee table as a good luck charm for the Jackets when a Georgia player slipped through Tech’s kickoff team and appeared headed for the end zone.
“No,” I shouted. Impulsively, I picked up the bank and shook it, the coins tinkling inside the ceramic container.
The Georgia return man abruptly dropped the football. He had not been touched.
I was stunned. I put the piggybank back on the coffee table as if it were radioactive.
“Jeepers,” I said. “This thing has magical powers.”
Over the years, I was able to influence the outcomes of a few Georgia/Georgia Tech games with my magical piggy bank. I apologize if some of you lost money or spent a weekend depressed as a result.
But as is often the case, a superpower leads to hubris. And I began to imagine I could get Tech a national title if I shook the piggybank at the right times and used its mojo judiciously.
But soon I was shaking the pig on third downs and field goal attempts from inside the 30-yard-line, and the mojo dried up. In fact, it more than dried up. It reversed itself and I didn’t even need to shake it. I had become cursed, myself.
It got so bad I wouldn’t wear any kind of clothing with an Atlanta team logo on it for fear it would mean misery for my players. In 1988, I put away my Braves caps and T-shirts and bought an Orioles hat.
Then, I moved into an apartment near Stone Mountain and discovered I could only get TBS (Channel 17) there because of the mountain’s interference with VHF broadcast signals (or at least that’s what I was told).
So I settled in to watch the Braves most nights after I got home from work. With me in the television audience almost every night, the Braves went 54-106 and finished dead last in the National League West, almost 40 games behind the first-place Dodgers. But not only did I put a hex on the Braves, the Orioles went 54-107 and finished dead last in the American League East.
I considered life in a monastery for a while, but after I moved out of that apartment, the Braves got better. I put the Orioles cap away and the Baltimore team had an almost miraculous turn around in 1989, finishing second, just two games behind the Blue Jays.
The fetches and spirits have largely left me alone since Donald Trump was elected president, possibly because he seems to draw so much negative energy out of the collective consciousness. Who can say?
But I am not alone with my superstitions.
Michael Jordan was said to wear a pair of North Carolina shorts under his Bulls uniform for good luck. Tiger Woods always wears a red shirt on the final day of a tournament, because his mother told him it was his power color.
Baseball Hall of Famer Larry Walker wore the number 33 for good luck and would only wake up at 33 past the hour. Nineteen players who wore the No. 3 are in the Hall of Fame, including Babe Ruth. Dale Murphy would make it 20.
Tom Weiskopf also believed in the power of No. 3. He played golf with three pennies and three tees in his pocket. Jack Nicklaus didn’t care if he had pennies or quarters, but he played with three coins in his pockets, too.
Must be something to it; Weiskopf won 28 tournaments, Nicklaus 117.
But I have yet to find a talisman-like three coins that avert bad luck. And I am sad to report a new hex reared its ugly head recently. My alma mater– Georgia State University– won a record number of games last season, and I was excited to root for the Panthers on Saturdays this year.
So, I pulled out my GSU hoodie for game one.
We’ve lost four in a row. Selah.