Are You a Superstitous Sports Fan?

Leon Berman is the host of “Shake the Shack,” a Friday night rockabilly radio show on KEXP I listen to as I drive to volleyball.  Last night one of his co-hosts pressed him to talk about his Seahawks pre-game rituals. (Sunday the Seahawks play Green Bay for the NFC championship.)  Leon’s family has held Seahawks season tickets since 1975.  He was genuinely reluctant to discuss the rituals, but admitted they were pretty OCD, and included things like not only wearing the same clothes, but putting them on in a precise order, and not only cooking the same brand of sausages for breakfast but aligning them in an exact pattern in the pan.  These, he admitted, were just the tip of an all-day iceberg.

Where does the belief that these rituals influence events come from?  You could say it’s an arrogant belief in one’s power:  if I do certain things associated with my team’s victories in the past I can help the team win by repeating them.  Baseball players in particular seem to do this regarding their individual performance: wearing the socks they wore the day they hit for the cycle.  But I think it’s not arrogance, it’s fear.  Our team wins an unexpected victory, and we think about all the circumstances surrounding the game, including what we did that day.  We begin to fear that if we don’t make our small contribution to those circumstances, the team may lose.  We recreate the details of the pregame period as a ritual, motivated not by arrogance and optimism, but by a sense of obligation and fear.

Do I have Seahawk rituals?  No.  And yet, when I think about my behavior….

I tend not to watch games from beginning to end.  I have the game on in the TV room and pop in from time to time to watch in small chunks, maybe five minutes. Okay, here it is.  I seem to believe that whether I’m watching or not influences the game.  But it can go either way.  If the Hawks do something good while I’m watching, I feel I need to stay at the set so more good things will happen.  If the other team marches down the field for an easy TD, I feel my presence is a negative influence that day and I leave the room hoping my absence will reverse the game’s direction.  I’ll pop back twenty minutes later to see if I’ve been successful….

Nothing rational about this other than an insight into how primitive religions were formed.

The Cheap Toilet Paper Fallacy

An article a few days ago in the New York Times talked about why Crohn’s disease isn’t much talked about.  People suffering from Crohn’s disease always have to know where the toilets are.

I don’t have Crohn’s, but I understand.  I only run on routes where I know the locations of the toilets.  I’ve had difficulties being a world traveler.  When I sit around a hotel room nothing happens.  When I get up and go exploring in a city, it’s time.

This has given me a certain, I won’t say expertise, but familiarity with the toilet paper supplied by a variety of public institutions.  I’ve visited many of those institutions while running and cycling in the greater Seattle area.

Seattle Parks, for instance.  Their TP is light and flimsy.  It probably costs half what more substantial paper costs.  That’s a poor economy.  Let’s say at home I tear off good quality TP in four-sheet lengths. Do I tear off eight at a Parks potty?  No, more like twelve, or let’s face it, sometimes you just grab a wad instead of sheets.  One consequence is that the rolls have to be replaced much more frequently, and that means more labor.  Any cost accountant who thinks a savings in paper supplies is not offset by increased labor costs should be doing something else.

Related sidebar:  I’ve been gluten-free for going on two years.  I’m doing it because my wife is gluten-sensitive.  I’m not.  It just makes menu-planning easier.  I do miss the currant scones and  tuna sandwiches on good rye.  But I’ve discovered a benefit that keeps me away from wheat.  That sudden need to find the potty?  It’s calmed a bit.  I have more time to search.  Enough of a benefit that today I mostly stay out of the bakeries I used to love.

Nietzsche and the Digital Abyss

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.  And if you gaze long enough into Google, Google will gaze back into you.

Why Does the Wall Street Journal Dislike the Seattle Seahawks So Much?

There were two articles featuring the Seattle Seahawks on the sports page of the WSJ the past two weeks.

The first article focused on the continual pass interference committed by the vaunted defensive backs of the team.  The argument was that the refs aren’t going to call pass interference on every pass play, even if pass interference happens on every play.  They’ll call it once, but not ten times in a row.  The Seahawks know this and have made it their strategy to smother the opponent’s receivers.

The intended readers of this article weren’t you and me, it was the NFL refs.  The refs were being called out.  “Come on, guys,” is the WSJ’s message. “Do your job, call more pass interference on the Seahawks.”

The second article featured the trash-talking of the Seahawks.  The Seahawks, according to the Journal, are very good at taunting opponents into committing personal fouls and not retaliating themselves.  More personal fouls are called on the opponent than on the Hawks.  Again, the Journal argues this is a deliberate and disciplined strategy.  The intended readers of this article weren’t you and me, it was the San Francisco Fortyniners.  The article was intended to be taped to 49er lockers.  “Be disciplined, guys,” is the message.  “They’ll taunt you, they’re good at it, and will try to get you to take a swing at them.  Don’t do it.”

The Seahawks must have gotten under the Journal’s skin at some point this year.  Maybe it’s just that they don’t believe a team from up there in that obscure corner of the country, the land of plaid shirts and pinecone eaters, could be that good, and must have cheated.  Or could it have been the Seahawks-Giants game this year?  The Seahawks humiliated the Giants in their own house, allowing the offense three points.  Sounds like a grudge to me, Wall Street Journal.

Two Birds in Argentina

We spend three weeks in December in Argentina.  Week one, Buenos Aires, the city of Evita, tango, the Boca Juniors and Jorge Luis Borges.  Week two, the wind and spectacular peaks of Patagonia; week three, the desert canyons, salt flats, and Malbec grapes of Cayafata and Salta in the north. 

But the two images that will remain imprinted in my memory are images of birds.

The first we saw hiking a forested trail in Patagonia.  We heard a scruffing and clattering in the trees about seventy feet away.  At first I thought I was seeing a black mammal the size of a beaver or woodchuck bouncing around on a fallen log.  I looked closer and realized it was a woodpecker.  I thought, “My God, this is unreal, I’m seeing a cartoon come to life!”  Later I learned we had seen a Magellanic Woodpecker, and the forward-bending tuft of feathers on its head  made this chicken-sized bird the model for Woody Woodpecker.

The second image was created by an Andean condor.  We took a back road to the Perito Morino glacier and were driving through a hilly estancia where sheep were raised. Normally these huge black birds, wings spanning eight to ten feet, soar a thousand feet above the ground.  But here several condors were carving turns in the thermals only a hundred or so feet overhead.  I saw a sheep followed by its lamb moving along a trail a short distance from where we were watching.  Suddenly the two creatures were darkened in the shadow of a condor drifting above them.  The shadow didn’t just flit across their heads.  The condor is so huge they were in its shadow for what seemed like several seconds.

The condors are not raptors; they were no threat to the sheep.  But for anyone raised attending a Christian Sunday school it is a primal image: the lamb, and the Psalm: Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death….