Tag Archives: Sports

Sport Television Crew Folk Belief

Nationality: Eastern European Jew
Age: 49
Occupation: Instructional Assistant in an Elementary School
Residence: Calabasas, California
Performance Date: March 17, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: None

“Make eye contact with a midget and its overtime and extra innings.”

 

This folk belief refers to sporting events. At any point during a sports game, if someone working for the television crew makes eye contact with a midget the game will go into overtime or have extra innings.

The informant is a middle aged mother of two boys and works at an elementary school. She heard this folklore from her husband who is a sports cameraman. She learned of this folk belief while they were watching a baseball game that went into extra innings, and the informant’s husband stated that “someone must have looked a midget in the eye.”

The informant laughed at her husband when she learned of this superstition and could not believe that this belief was actually practiced in the sports community. However, she found from her husband that many people in the sports production industry follow this folk belief; although, she does not think that they actually believe if they look a midget in the eye it will affect the length of the game. This folk belief is significant to those in the television coverage industry because they have been preparing for the production of the game throughout the entire day, so by the end of the game, they are tired and want to go home. Thus, they do not want to stay there for extra innings or overtime and are incentivized to not want the length of the game extended.

I found this to be a shocking tradition that is quite rude to a specific class of people for no distinguishable reason. The informant and her husband do not know where the superstition originated and I could not find anything about it online. I also cannot think of a reason why something like this would have originated.

Lacrosse Superstitions

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/5/12

Playing sports in high school, I was familiar with sports superstitions and pre-game rituals that certain players might believe in. For this specific case, my informant is a sophomore midfielder on the USC lacrosse team. I asked him about any specific superstitions he might have. He told me that he wasn’t too unique in that he had a pair of lucky underwear, or compression shorts, that he would wear on every game day. “After my high school team won the state championship my senior year of high school, and I was wearing these compressions, I’ve thought they were lucky ever since”. He admits to not really believing and buying into superstitions, but noted “for some reason, I still would find myself nervous if I wasn’t wearing them. It’s like a sort of comfort; knowing that I’m in my element”.

He notes that for extremely important games, like playoffs or against UCLA, he also has a pair of lucky socks that he sports. Those, like the underwear, are also riddled with holes and battle scars. “It’s part of their personality, their history” he says. They are a special brand of “Adrenaline Lacrosse Socks” that have lacrosse players stitched on the side. I found it interesting to see that athletes such as him choose superstition over comfort and functionality in many situations. He noted that sometimes he gets blisters when he wears those socks because of all the holes.

“I just have to”, he says, “we have too much history together”.

Superstitions such as this span across the globe and are present in many different sports. I had seen rituals and superstitions such as this as a football player in high school where players would have lucky socks, boxers, t-shirts, and shoes. I believe that this superstition is here because players are constantly nervous to play their best, and any extra boost helps. Confidence is such an important aspect in sports, that I truly believe that if a player is more confident because they are wearing their ‘lucky’ clothing, that they will play better in the end.

It Never Rains At Autzen Stadium

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Eugene, Oregon
Performance Date: 4/25/12
Primary Language: English

Last year, I went to the USC vs. University of Oregon football game at Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Oregon. At the beginning of the game, the announcer in the loud speaker at the game proclaimed that:

“It Never Rains at Autzen Stadium!”

As he said it, all of the fans yelled it along with him and began cheering loudly. I turned to my friend that I was at the game with and asked her what the deal was. I knew for a fact that Oregon is notorious for its heavy rains. In fact, I had watched an Oregon football game the weekend before on TV where it was a torrential downpour! My informant said that it’s just a part of what they do at football games.It’s a tradition, she said.

She told me that they’ve always done it, and that they even did it when her brother was at school there in the early 2000’s. “It’s not that it really doesn’t ever rain at Autzen Stadium”, she said, “it’s more about the symbolic meaning”. Something like, the Ducks never have a bad game at Autzen Stadium, or that they will always play well, she says.

My informant told me that there have been multiple occasions in her college career where they have blatantly said that while it was raining or pouring. She says that it’s just something that brings everybody together at the games; it get’s everybody fired up. “The players love it, the fans love it, it get’s us ready to go!”.

I believe that this tradition was likely started because of Oregon’s notorious rains and long rainy season. It was likely a way of intimidating opposing teams and players. Because usually that might be the only thing that opponents know about Oregon, I see it as the University’s method of saying “you don’t know anything about us, you don’t know what you’ve got coming for you in this game”. I also think it’s symbolic, like my informant stated, that the Ducks will never play a bad game there.

Jinxing

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/18/12
Primary Language: English

This piece of folklore came about when I was watching a basketball game with my informant, and the player had gotten fouled and was shooting free throws. The commentator said that this shooter was a “phenomenal free throw shooter, one of the best in the NBA”, and that he had made 16 in a row at this point. My informant looked over at me and said, “he just jinxed him”, and the player wound up shooting and missing the free throw attempt. My informant said “I told you so”, and I asked him what he thought the origins of jinxing were.

My informant told me that he has been familiar with the concept for years, in sporting events, and life events in general. “I’ve learned to never try to predict things, saying that things will be good or that something will happen. I’m afraid of jinxing it” he said. When I asked my informant whether or not he really thought that this piece of folklore was, in a sense, real, he said “you never know”. He told me that more often than not, whenever he feels like he has jinxed something, it usually goes wrong.

My informant told me that he wasn’t sure whether it just felt that way, or if there really was a statistical correlation. He says that he is especially sensitive to jinxing in the world of sports. He says that he never outright says that one team will win, or that a certain player will have a good game if he is rooting for them. He said he just wants to “play it safe” so he doesn’t get frustrated afterwards if things go the opposite way.

He says that sometimes he’ll even try to jinx the team or player that he is rooting against, telling somebody that the team he wants to lose is “going to win”, in hopes that it will jinx the other team. A lot of people believe that it doesn’t work that way, he says, but thinks that he may as well try.

I believe that this piece of folk belief likely dates far back in history, as it seems to be common across the globe and a very common belief. I believe that people believe in jinxing because they only really pay attention to when the jinxing actually works. If a person or team gets jinxed one day, and they end up succeeding anyways, I believe that an individual will not pay as much attention to that event. On the other hand, if a jinx goes through and truly works, I believe a person is more likely to say, “I told you so” or “that always happens”.

Basketball Superstition: Rolaids and Army Socks

Nationality: American
Age: 53
Occupation: Partner at Ernst & Young
Residence: Manhattan Beach, CA
Performance Date: April 15th, 2012
Primary Language: English

Interview Extraction:

Informant: “So growing up I played basketball, and my dad was a basketball coach. And basketball was the most important thing in my life. I played basketball- I was like Jack across the street, I played basketball every day. Every year, every day I would be out shooting hoops and what not. I was pretty good, I was a good shooter. But shooters are very superstitious and there was a certain amount of you get hot, and you don’t get hot, right? Where your shooting is off, so you have good nights and you have bad nights. Well, part of that is psychological.  So my dad, my dad who was the coach, he had a really nervous stomach. And so he would buy not rolls, but boxes of Rolaids. These white tablets, and he kept them in this brown cardboard box with no writing on it. So the players would notice that Coach Paul had these, so he got the idea that he would tell his players that these were shooting pills that would help you shoot the ball better. And so, it became a big joke, but he used to hand them out before the game to everyone and they were the quote “magical” pills. And everyone knew that they probably weren’t, but we all felt like it was good luck to eat one of Coach Paul’s Rolaids before the game to help our shooting. So I became very superstitious, I always had to have a Rolaid before every game. And my socks, my Pete Maravich socks. Pete Maravich was a great basketball player who died very young. His dad was also a basketball coach, and he wore these grey old army socks. And he was a great player, and he wore these baggy old army socks that he was always wiping his hands on. And uh, so I bought some and I had some baggy grey army socks and I used to wear them because Pete wore them.”

Analysis:

As an athlete, there is a tremendous pressure to do well.  While the outcome of the game is largely from the collective or individual effort of the players, there is a psychological necessity to create familiarity and order in your sport so that your mind remains calm and focused during the game.  To create a sense of peace, athletes have come up with many different rituals to perform before the event so that their mind becomes free of anxiety and focused on what they need to do.  This can be a number of things that vary on the sport or individual, such as taking time to stretch by yourself before running a race or picturing yourself doing well during the game.  This kind of homeopathic thinking is also very common in basketball.

The superstitions my informant mentioned are ones that are unique to him, though I have heard of similar rituals in my research such as basketball players having a lucky pair of shoes they always wear for a game.  The Rolaid superstition serves as two functions. One, it is a unique tradition that the Arcata High School basketball team shared during the time my informant played that created a sense of community with the players by having this ritual.  This sense of community is important with playing in a sport that relies on the collective effort of a team.  The second function is that the Rolaids are part of a homeopathic magic that helps the players get into the mind-set that they will succeed.  Having a winning attitude is an integral part of performing well in any sport.

The other superstition involving the Pete Maravich socks is also a form of homeopathic magic.  The informant believed that by wearing the same kind of socks Pete Maravich wore, he would be able to perform as well as Pete Maravich.  Thus creating the same kind of winning attitude that the Rolaid ritual gave to the players.  While my informant no longer plays on a basketball team, he has taken his sock superstition with him into his professional life.  He once mentioned to me that he has a favorite pair of socks he likes to wear for important business presentations.  In this sense he is using the ritual he learned as a basketball player to create a winning attitude in business, which is also integral to successful proposals or negotiations.

My informant was born in 1957 Arcata, California to a high school basketball coach and his wife.  After earning his undergraduate degree in engineering from the University of California, Davis, he moved to southern California to obtain his MBA in business from the University of Southern California.  He now a partner at Ernst & Young. He lives in Manhattan Beach, CA with his wife and has two children.