Whatever it takes
The naked truth about Baseball superstitions
Have you heard the one about…
…the power of the shower?
Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh had tried just about everything.
When a hitter who had led the American League with 60 home runs and 125 RBI last season is 0-for-36 with 16 strikeouts over 9 games, there really aren’t many bad ideas. Change bats. Change batting gloves. Change walk-up music. Change socks. Don’t change socks. Eat something different. Eat the same thing again. Stop thinking. Think harder. Pretend you’re not thinking.
Or take a shower in full uniform.
That’s what Raleigh did May 11--after another 0-for-4 in Houston--on the recommendation of teammate Logan Gilbert, who suggested he needed to wash off the “bad mojo” from the baseball gods. Raleigh listened. Full uniform. Post-game shower. A baseball cleansing ritual.
The next night, after an 0-for-2 start that ran his slide to 0-for-38, he collected hits in his last 2 at-bats in a 10-2 win over the Astros, mercifully bringing to an end the longest hitless drought in the majors this season.
Which brings us to one of the great accidental summaries of Baseball culture, courtesy of Michael Scott from The Office:
“I’m not superstitious. But I am a little stitious.”
No sport embodies that wisdom more fully than Baseball.
