And now for some breaking news: Baseball players are superstitious!

OK, I guess that’s not really news to anybody. Everyone knows that athletes, especially baseballers, routinely attribute their good and not-so-good performances to powers beyond. I, however, being the skeptical, disbelieving empiricist that I am, reject superstitition. It’s nonsense, plain and simple.

Yep, you struck out four times because you smudged the foul line. Definitely.

I watch this stuff everyday. No one wants to step on the foul line. Batting gloves must be neartly arranged in the back pocket exactly like they were last at-bat. Dirty socks and jocks must not be washed during a winning streak. The starter has a no-hitter going – no one talk to him, mention it, or disturb his seat while he’s in the dugout; if you do, it will surely be broken up.

This stuff would be considered insanity in the household, workplace, or anywhere else. To go to such lengths to control some unknown force, that exists just to meddle in your athletic endeavors, is absurd.

A blooper dropped in; must have been the ghosts.

Remember Angels in the Outfield? You know, the mediocre baseball movie starring one of those child actors, that we all used to know, and Danny Glover? In the movie, the Anaheim Angels started winning when the supernatural (yes, I’m categorizing angels just the same as Casper and the Marshmallow Man) decided to intervene, making fly balls zig-zag, turning routine outs into hilariously befuddling triples. This movie raises the questions…

"Angels caused your golden sombrero? Why, that sounds completely reasonable!"

Is this really what we think superstition is all about? Have we ever really thought about the mechanics of it?

That some force out there, be it ghosts, Jesus, voodoo, or whatever, is altering the flight of the baseball and one’s own baseball-pursuing self, so as to alter the outcome of a play when proper superstition is not observed? This is what we are really conceding when we engage in superstition – that something out there is going to change the outcome if we don’t.

Friendly, until he guides a blooper over your shortstop's head

It’s just baffling, to think that anything other than what physics dictates will happen, can happen. Pool is a great example of physics in motion – the balls move exactly according to force and angle at which they struck. There’s nothing else to discuss. And, though I don’t have any data on this, I would venture that pool players have very little to be superstitious about during a match – it seems that any good pool player would realize that it’s all about the angles.

Baseball is the same way; but we just forget that it is. Once the pitch leaves the hand, it flies exactly as physics dictates – according to it’s velocity, spin, wind resistance, etc. Once the pitch leaves the hand, it can end up in only one location. Likewise for the bat – when the hitter swings, the bat hits the ball, sending it off in a direction that is solely determined by the collisions of the two and the surrounding enviroment. Where does superstition factor into this physical transaction? When does the hand of God put that extra bit of English on the pitch? When do the ghosts weigh down the legs of the shortstop, so that the 15-hopper squeaks through the infield?

They don’t. They just don’t.

And besides the non-sensical mechanics of it, where is the performance correlation? What has superstition ever done for you?

Great hitters hit .300. That means that if they perform the same ritual every time up, it fails for them 70% of the time. Ever think about that? Pitchers use the same superstitions despite winning and losing by them. Why bother? Baseball is such an up and down sport, that any statistical analysis would quickly prove zero correlation whatsoever between rituals and performance. If my ritual caused me to get a hit only 3/10 at-bats, I would assume it was hurting me, not helping me.

The bottom line is that the only thing that matters in this world, the way I see it, is your own action. I control my body, which in turn controls the objects over which I have influence. One they leave my hand, each pitch does the only dance it was ever able to do – one that is predetermined by physics and the nature of myself and this world. There is no room for supernatural meddling, and no room for stressing and wasting energy on trivial rituals.

Oh Stevie Wonder, how you have led us all astray!