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watching. “Baseball players are an odd bunch,” Bobby Czekaj said. “We’ll do anything as long as we keep winning.” The boys of Post 330 aren’t doing anything new, their just continuing a storied tradition of baseball superstitions, rituals and routines. No sport has more quirky superstitions than America’s pastime. 3,000 -hit second baseman Craig Biggio refuses to wash his batting helmet in-season. The baseball gods are watching. Hall of Fame third baseman Wade Boggs was the Rajah of Rituals. He ate fried chicken before every game, took batting practice at 5:17 p.m., ran wind sprints at 7:17, took exactly 150 ground balls in the infield, and carved the Hebrew “Chai” symbol in the dirt before every at-bat. The baseball gods were watching. John Smoltz, was once was doing jumping jacks in the clubhouse during an Atlanta Braves rally, and was afraid to stop lest that he be held responsible for the end of the Braves’ scoring. He ended up doing jumping jacks for nearly half an hour. The baseball gods were watching. In 1982, Tony LaRussa received a death threat while managing the Chicago White Sox that resulted in him wearing a protective vest. La Russa covered the vest with a warmup jacket . When the Sox rolled off a long winning streak, LaRussa kept the jacket. He wears it today. The baseball gods are watching. Hall-of-Famer Richie Ashburn slept with his bat. Former pitcher Rick Cerrone wore his college long johns for every start. And before every start Roger Clemens made at Yankee Stadium, he touched the Babe Ruth plaque out behind the left field wall. All because the baseball gods were watching. “Almost everyone is superstitious,” Pbst 330 shortstop Ben Willoughby said. “Baseball players just take it to a different extreme.” Some players wear different color socks. Some wear a wad of gum on their cap. And others fiddled with their batting gloves before each swing. Baseball players want to play well. They want to win. And most of all, they don’t want to upset the baseball gods.
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