{"id":716830,"date":"2026-06-05T11:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T11:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/716830\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T11:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T11:23:08","slug":"the-strange-history-of-baseballs-superstitions-magic-is-in-the-sports-very-structure-mlb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/716830\/","title":{"rendered":"The strange history of baseball\u2019s superstitions: \u2018Magic is in the sport\u2019s very structure\u2019 | MLB"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a Chicago legend, nurtured like a hot dog with everything except ketchup. During the 1945 World Series, local bar owner William Sianis brought his pet goat, Murphy, to a game between the hometown Cubs and the Detroit Tigers. Murphy was denied entry, because he smelled. Thus began the Curse of the Billy Goat<\/a>, dooming Chicago\u2019s NL entry to decades of also-ran status. As Sianis reportedly wrote team owner Philip Knight Wrigley after the Tigers won in 1945, \u201cWho smells now?\u201d The Cubs would not win another title until 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Welcome to the world of magic in baseball. On the macro level, a goat can apparently change the fortunes of an entire team; on the micro level, batters engage in elaborate rituals at the plate, and no one dares to say \u201cno-hitter\u201d until the final out. It\u2019s a narrative that goes back to baseball\u2019s 19th-century origins, and it\u2019s all chronicled in a new book out this week \u2013 The Magical Game: The Spirit and History of Baseball\u2019s Superstitions, Rituals, and Curses by author, journalist, astrologer and New York Mets fan Addy Baird.<\/p>\n

While cheering on the Mets, Baird says, \u201cI found myself becoming a very superstitious baseball fan. It\u2019s part of what made me want to write the book. Probably predictably, I got extra superstitious when the Mets, for once, played great baseball for some stretches.\u201d Trying to influence a win, she says, \u201cI changed the way I acted, things I did, wore, watched, said, ate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baird has plenty of company within the pages of the book. There are turn-of-the-century managers like Connie Mack of the Philadelphia Athletics and John McGraw of the New York Giants who relied on human mascots to bring their teams good luck. In the 1980s and 1990s, Wade Boggs famously ate chicken before every game. In this decade, a Seattle Mariners fan believes that when he held a pair of slippers in his hand, it somehow sunk his team\u2019s fortunes. And when the Tampa Bay Rays struggle in the middle innings, music from Middle Earth soothes a Rays fan who otherwise has no interest in Lord of the Rings.<\/p>\n

Those superstitions appear to have bled into softball. This week it was revealed that a top college player eats ladybugs in the dugout<\/a> for good luck.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the larger-than-life narratives surrounding baseball, its mythologies and curses. Baseball hushed up its British connections and created its own made-in-America origin story featuring Civil War general Abner Doubleday and a ballfield in Cooperstown, New York. Multiple Major League teams became associated with curses \u2013 not just the Cubs but also the Boston Red Sox, who notoriously sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. Champions in 1918, the Sox did not win another World Series until 2004. Over that 86-year drought, they became known for agonizing near-misses, notably in 1986 against Baird\u2019s Mets, losing Game 6 of the World Series on a ball that went through Bill Buckner\u2019s legs.<\/p>\n

Asked what it is about baseball that makes it more prone to magic than other sports, Baird had several answers: The presence of luck. The structure of the game. And its repetitive nature.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, when a sport has fewer instances of scoring, luck is a bigger factor,\u201d she says. Structurally, she notes, \u201c[baseball] is one of the only games we play, and the only major North American sport, where the defense has the ball. The offense has a crazy power imbalance. It creates a really uncertain environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s another surefire way to spark superstitious practices, according to researchers? An atmosphere of constant repetition, such as each time a batter comes to the plate over a 162-game regular season.<\/p>\n

\u201cA batter maybe sees more than a dozen pitches every game,\u201d Baird says. \u201cThere\u2019s a split second from the ball leaving the pitcher\u2019s hand [and going] over the plate for you to try and hit it \u2026 it compounds the elements of uncertainty and luck, a perfect environment for magic to thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baird is a politics journalist who previously worked in Washington DC, where she covered including the impeachments of Donald Trump to the January 6 riots. Describing herself as burnt-out, she decided to leave her full-time job and write a book. A friend advised her to pick a subject she loved, as she would be spending all her time with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do I care about? What can I spend four years on?\u201d she recalls thinking. \u201cThe answers, for me, were baseball and magic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always loved magic, astrology, tarot cards, spirituality, religion. I\u2019ve been very interested since I was a kid.\u201d Her passion for baseball and the Mets is more recent, dating back to a decade ago and \u201ca magical game with my father.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was an unexpected element of magic regarding this article: A copy of the book mysteriously disappeared from a room in this reporter\u2019s home on the morning of the interview. Later in the day, with an hour to spare before the call, the book mysteriously reappeared in a different room.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo way!\u201d Baird says when informed of this. \u201cNo way.\u201d With a laugh, she adds, \u201cThis book is a magical object.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Magical Game contains nine chapters, reflecting the nine innings of a baseball game. Baird, a former archivist, delved into newspapers on microfilm at the Library of Congress and interviewed experts such as John Thorn, the official historian of Major League Baseball. The book backs up its findings on baseball with insights from seemingly unrelated fields like psychology and anthropology: Baird discusses Joseph Campbell\u2019s concept of the hero\u2019s journey, and Bronislaw Malinowski\u2019s study of South Pacific island fishermen in the early 20th century.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the inner lagoons, [the fishermen] had no magic rituals,\u201d Baird says of Malinowski\u2019s findings. \u201cIn the open sea, where it was more dangerous, and the catch was more uncertain, there were a lot of magic rituals involved \u2026 What happens in baseball is uncertainty, prediction of failure, a high degree of luck.\u201d When it comes to rituals in such an environment, she says, \u201cthe human brain is almost perfectly designed to latch on in this way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, MLB\u2019s Thorn noted that \u201cthe form of the game itself mirrors that of the Odyssey,\u201d Baird says. \u201cIt\u2019s the hero\u2019s journey: You start at home,\u201d where you either \u201cstrike out \u2013 literally or figuratively,\u201d or \u201cgo on a journey where the goal is to come home. It\u2019s the story of the Odyssey. The story of this myth is embedded in the game itself. Magic is in its very structure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book asks whether sabermetrics, and recent rule changes aimed at shortening games, have made the magic disappear in baseball. Baird has shifted her stance on this. In the summer of 2022, she pitched a book chapter on the death of magic in the national pastime. One year later, MLB debuted its pitch clock.<\/p>\n

\u201cI pitched the chapter, \u2018baseball is dead, the magic is over, the league killed it by implementing new rules,\u2019\u201d Baird says. After doing more research, she had a realization: \u201cI was entering a long tradition of people who had been saying this since the 1860s: \u2018They don\u2019t play baseball like they used to, baseball\u2019s dying if not dead.\u201d What she\u2019s come to believe is that \u201cthe game should evolve, an unchanging thing is a dead thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for sabermetrics, Baird says, they \u201chelp us to see what makes [baseball] unique, what makes it special, what makes players exceptionally good \u2026 Those numbers reveal to us the magic.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the end of her book project, not only did she have a completed manuscript, but an additional career path. In addition to continuing with her journalism, now for the Deseret News, she has also become a practicing astrologer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was one of my really interesting side quests,\u201d Baird says, adding that now, \u201cI do readings for people, reading charts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether you\u2019re an Astros fan or an astrologer, a Cardinals enthusiast or a tarot card reader, the book has something for everyone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always tell people, it\u2019s a book for people who love baseball,\u201d Baird says, \u201calso for those who do not care about baseball at all.\u201d And, she adds, \u201cit\u2019s a book for the people who love magic, looking at it through a lens they may never have considered before.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a Chicago legend, nurtured like a hot dog with everything except ketchup. During the 1945 World Series,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-716830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}