Tag Archives: Sports

The Bride of the Ball Field

Age: 35

Location: Kailua Kona, Hawai’i

Text:

“So we’re getting back super late from an away game, like close to midnight. The field’s totally dark, no lights on anywhere, just the bus headlights. We all start unloading our gear, and I noticed the lady. At first I just stared out because I couldn’t tell what it was.

I tell everyone, ‘Do you guys see that?’ And we all look, and there’s this lady in a long white dress just walking the warning track. Slow, like she’s searching for something. At first we thought she was just some random person who wandered in, but the longer we watched her, the weirder it felt. She never looked at us, never changed her pace, never reacted at all.

Her dress was dragging behind her like it was floating, even though there was no wind. And she just kept making this slow loop around the field, head kind of tilted like she was looking for someone.

We all started unpacking the bus way faster. Like throwing bags out, not even caring where they landed because everyone just wanted to get to their cars and get out of there. By the time we left, she was still out there walking the field, not noticing us at all.

I thought about it for a while that night and recalled the dress looking like a wedding dress. Although I wasn’t sure, I thought that maybe she was searching for her husband.”

Context:

This ghost story was told to the informant by their baseball coach. The coach claimed to have encountered the apparition more than once over the years. He described the woman as a deserted bride who wanders the baseball field at night searching for the man who abandoned her on their wedding day

Analysis:

This legend blends personal testimony with the classic “white lady” ghost motif. The baseball field, normally filled with noise, players, and daylight becomes creepy when empty and dark. This creates the perfect setting for a spectral figure whose emotional trauma keeps her stuck to the space.

The lady’s slow pacing reveals her restlessness, mirroring her search for her husband who left her. The idea that she is only present at night reinforces her connection to liminality: she inhabits the darkness, the in-between spaces, and vanishes as the sun comes up.

Bring Em Out – Ritual

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Language: English

Ritual Dance/Entrance: Bring Em Out

Context: “‘Bring em out’ is an entrance tradition I do with my high school volleyball team. It starts with all of the girls lining up in pairs, captains in the front, then seniors, then juniors, etcetera. We line up by the main doorway that leads to the main part of the gym, and they play the song “Bring Em Out” by T.I. plays over the speakers in the gym. When it gets to a certain part of the song, every pair runs out one after another, jumping up and slapping the arch of the doorway as they pass it. The JV and frosh teams are lined up on the endline and sideline as we enter, so we high five them along the way and then high five our partner over the net before running a few drills and high fiving them on the other side of the net. It’s a really fun tradition for every home game, it serves the same purpose as like a wrestling entrance so the crowd gets hyped up and all the players ready to go.”

Analysis: This is the second of two pre-volleyball game rituals given to me by my informant, and I think it shows just how prevalent folklore is in places and situations where you wouldn’t expect it. I don’t think a single person on the planet thinks of folklore when someone mentions sports and vice versa. And yet it is featured so prominently, in ways that don’t jump out as being folklore but can absolutely be considered as such after learning about the ritualistic and symbolic significance behind it. I found the comparison to wrestling entrances especially funny, but it absolutely holds true. The entrance is an extremely important part of a performance, and what is sports if not an athletic performance? The whole process of “Bring Em Out” can be compared to some of the ritualistic practices of theatre troupes, which most would agree fall under the category of folklore. I had always seen things like this and enjoyed them without ever analyzing through the lens of folklore, and I think doing so can reveal a lot.

The Lucky Jersey Number

Folk Belief / Superstition
Occupational Folklore – Sports / Number Lore

1. Text

SI, a college athlete and lifelong soccer player, described a common superstition in sports: the belief that a specific jersey number brings good luck. For SI, the number is 12, a number he has worn on nearly every team since middle school. “It’s more than just a number,” he said. “It feels like part of me. When I wear it, I play better. When I don’t, I feel like something’s missing.”

He explained that the belief isn’t about the number being universally magical, but about it becoming his number through performance and association. “I had my best game ever in seventh grade wearing number 12,” he recalled. “After that, it just stuck. Every time I had a good game in that jersey, it reinforced the feeling.” SI went so far as to describe himself as being “protective” of the number even feeling annoyed if another player tries to claim it first.

The superstition extends beyond performance to preparation. “One time I couldn’t wear 12, and I just dropped the league. I was already in a tournament league.” he said.

While SI recognizes that there’s no scientific logic to it, he believes the number has become a symbol of confidence and consistency. “I know it sounds silly,” he said, “but it’s mental. I just feel better when I have it.”

2. Context

SI first developed a relationship with the number 12 in middle school, during a formative moment in his soccer career. After an unexpected breakout performance in a local tournament while wearing that number, the connection became ritualized. From that point on, he began requesting the jersey number for every team he played on, even switching teams in some cases to ensure he could keep it. Over time, the number took on an almost talismanic quality, a symbol of personal power and performance.

This superstition is typical within sports folklore, where personal and communal rituals help athletes cope with the intense pressure and unpredictability of competition. SI’s belief in the power of his number was not taught formally but developed through associative experience: repeated moments of success while wearing the number reinforced its symbolic power. His emotional attachment to it grew not from tradition passed down, but from personal repetition and ritual — a hallmark of vernacular belief in individual athletic settings.

SI’s relationship to the number is deeply embodied. He noted that wearing it helps him feel physically and mentally aligned. If he’s forced to play without it, he often adapts by symbolically carrying the number elsewhere — on his warm-up gear, wristbands, or even drawn in marker on his sock. These substitutions act as symbolic proxies, maintaining the ritual even when the official uniform can’t.

The importance of the jersey number is also entangled with group identity. Numbers can signify status, position, or legacy — especially in team sports whime numbers are often retired or passed down. SI mentioned that when someone else wore him number, he felt “weirdly territorial, like they were taking something that belonged to me.” This shows how the number not only signifies self, but also occupies cultural space within the team structure.

3. Interpretation

The belief in a “lucky jersey number” is a classic example of sports superstition, rooted in what folklorist Linda Dégh would identify as personal experience narratives that become ritualized through repetition and reinforced belief. The number, in this case, functions as a symbolic charm, an object that carries emotional and psychological weight far beyond its practical use.

This superstition operates at the intersection of magical thinking and performance psychology. The number itself has no inherent power, but the belief in it helps the athlete enter a desired mental state. In this way, the superstition becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: the confidence it instills improves focus, motivation, and execution. The lucky number acts as a trigger for performance identity, allowing the athlete to “step into” their best version of themselves.

SI’s attachment to the number, even when it’s not available, reflects a broader human impulse to anchor meaning in material objects. In moments of unpredictability (a game, a tournament, a close match), the number becomes a stabilizing symbol. It offers comfort, consistency, and an illusion of control — all of which are critical under competitive pressure.

On a larger scale, this belief mirrors number lore found across cultures, where certain numbers (e.g., 7, 13, 3) are invested with spiritual or superstitious meanings. In SI’s case, the number is not culturally universal but individually sacred, rooted in him specific history of success and reinforced by the ritual of wearing it. This personalizes the belief while still aligning with broader folkloric patterns — specifically the idea that symbols gain power through use, memory, and embodied repetition.

Ultimately, SI’s lucky jersey number is more than a superstition, rather a living symbol of personal history, identity, and agency. Like many forms of folklore, its truth lies not in evidence, but in function: it works because it feels true.

Sporty Superstitions

My sister is a sailor on the Stanford women’s team, the number one ranked women’s sailing team in the country. She’s starting in regattas as a freshman, so one would assume she knows what she’s doing. Although I couldn’t get any specific advice on how to make that happen—sorry to those hoping—I did manage to squeeze out some of what she considers to be a part of her “luck” factor. Before any race, and whenever she’s feeling nervous on the water, she does a specific breathing exercise that her coach introduced to the team.

This breathing exercise, which she plainly calls “our breathing exercise,” is recorded online as “5-in-5-out.” Funnily enough, she never really learned it “formally,” she told me:

“It’s just something that our coach told us one day. No real explanation, no official name—I don’t even think he gave us instructions beyond ‘do this when it feels right.’”

Still, from what I found online, the method follows the exact same steps she described:

  1. Sit up straight or cross-legged.
  2. Relax your shoulders.
  3. Inhale quietly through your nose for a count of five.
  4. Hold your breath for a count of five.
  5. Exhale quietly through your nose for a count of five.
  6. Repeat for 10 minutes.

She did however note minimal flexibility in how she practices it:

“I don’t really care about sitting a certain way or how long I do it for. Most of it is just up to whatever I think is best at the moment.”

At the end of the day, she does it however and whenever she feels she needs it.

Breathing exercises are one of those things that I’m not sure folklore has fully claimed yet. I feel as though it is typically regarded as more medicinal than folkloric, but we all know those two things go hand in hand. If I had to classify it, I’d say this kind of ritual has two hands in the folklore cookie jar—one reaching into sports superstitions, the other into traditional yoga and meditative medicinal practices.

When it comes to luck in sports, superstitions are everywhere. Baseball players wear the same jersey without washing it, Serena Williams famously wears the same pair of socks throughout a tournament, and my sister practices this breathing ritual before racing. It’s fascinating that humans try to “cheat” natural physical systems by invoking rituals, almost like tapping into forces beyond the physical—maybe an over-dramatization, but I think my point stands.

The interesting thing is that these seemingly kooky practices often have real benefits. If you believe you are lucky, you can sometimes manifest that luck into something real, whether it be confidence, composure, or performance.

Historically, these breathing techniques have deep roots. The Box Breathing method—famously taught to Navy SEAL snipers to maintain calm and focus—is a modern example. Yet, these practices aren’t new. Yogis developed Box Breathing over 5,000 years ago, originally calling it Sama Vritti Pranayama.

Despite their very real effects, breathing exercises like Box Breathing and 5-in-5-out don’t quite fit within traditional academic “science.” They exist in that murky space between folk wisdom, practical ritual, and physiological effect.

I’ve always loved the idea of trying to cheat chance and manifest luck. Whether it’s for tests, sports, or life in general, it’s only human to strive for perfection and victory by any means necessary—no matter how strange.

“That Team Up North”

Slang term for the Michigan Wolverines college football team used by fans and members of the Ohio State Buckeyes college football team.

First encountered by informant while watching College Gameday for one of the yearly Ohio State-Michigan football games.

One of the many indicators of the sustained antipathy that exists between Michigan and Ohio State fans, the phrase “That Team Up North” was coined by Woody Hayes – Ohio State’s famed football coach from 1951 through 1978 – at an uncertain point in his tenure. Hayes coined it because he so detested Michigan that he refused to say their name. Nearly forty years after Hayes’s death, the Ohio State fanbase – one of college football’s largest – still uses “That Team Up North” in everyday parlance for the exact same reason.