My informant is a pitcher on the baseball team, and he told me that the first game that he started this season he had gotten  a brand new pair of baseball socks from the manager, because the ones he had been wearing had too many holes in them. That night he had a really good game and won. From then on, he says that he has been wearing a new pair of socks every time he has gone out to pitch.

It wasn’t anything he planned on doing, and nobody suggested that he do it. Neither him nor I had ever heard of another instance of a person who did the same thing. There have been instances in sports where players will, for good luck, do things like where the same socks or other articles of clothing, or use the same equipment (like a bat or shoes), while their performance is good. My guess is that he subconsciously feels that by wearing new  socks every time he pitches he is somehow starting fresh, free from the memory of the successes, and failures, of the past.