Superstars Aren’t Playing Games With Superstitions

Maybe it’s the enforced rhythm of the game that produces baseball’s literature.

Maybe there’s something about standing around in the outfield or languishing in the bullpen or riding the bench day after day that polishes the storytelling instinct.

Whatever the reasons, baseball’s library of poetry and prose, of drama and comedy, is as much a part of the game as home runs and strikeouts.

Mike Blake appreciates that more than most. The 42-year-old Brea writer has done a couple of baseball books--one a paean to the minor leagues and the other a tribute to those indispensable souls who help color the game, titled “The Incomplete Book of Baseball Superstitions, Rituals and Oddities.”

“Phil Rizzuto, who was probably the most superstitious player of his era, would drive by cemeteries on the way to the ballgame,” Blake said. “He kept chewing the same piece of gum for 21 days during a Yankee winning streak. He’d put it on the button of his cap, and the Yankees would pour liniment on it and tobacco juice, and Rizzuto was getting sick, but he chewed it anyway, because he didn’t want to kill the streak.”

Because today’s players are under more scrutiny than their counterparts in baseball’s bygone eras, Blake thinks they’re more circumspect about admitting to rituals.

A case in point: former Angel Dave Parker, whom Blake approached last year about rituals or superstitions. Don’t have any, Parker said pointedly and repeatedly. As Blake was walking away, however, Parker said, “There is this thing I do with gum, but it’s not a ritual.”

Parker told him, Blake said, “that every time he’d go to bat, he had a cup and he’d put exactly four sticks of gum in the cup. He’d empty it from the cup to his mouth just before he hit the on-deck circle. He’d chew it up, blow a bubble as he hit the on-deck circle, chew the gum through that at-bat, whether he got a hit, made an out, scored, whatever. As soon as that at-bat was over, he’d blow one more bubble, spit out the gum and sit in his very own spot in the dugout with his empty cup next to him, which nobody else could touch.”

But, as Blake noted with a smile, “he didn’t have any rituals.”

Five-time American League batting champ Wade Boggs is probably the most superstitious of the modern players, Blake said, with his obsession for eating chicken, running laps only at certain times and carving the same insignia in the dirt before every at-bat. Boggs believes “there are hits in chicken,” which would have made for an interesting duel with former pitcher Gaylord Perry, who believed, Blake said, “that there were outs in chicken.”

Perry also stars in a classic baseball oddity, Blake said. “Nineteen sixty-two, Perry comes up to hit in his first game and his manager Alvin Dark says: ‘That is the worst swing I ever saw. We’ll land a man on the moon before you hit a home run.’

“July 20, 1969,” Blake continues, “man lands on the moon. A few hours later, Perry hits his first major league home run. He finished with six home runs, exactly the same number of manned missions that landed on the moon.”

Former American Leaguer Minnie Minoso once showered in his uniform after a game because he wanted to expel evil spirits, Blake said. “The next day he got four hits, and nine of his teammates jumped in the shower with their uniforms on.” Perhaps that inspired the Boston Red Sox of 1990, who burned uniforms and bats in a clubhouse exorcism and then went on a winning streak, Blake said.

Blake estimates that as many as 20% of today’s major leaguers have some kind of superstition or ritual. What it generally boils down to, he says, is trying to “find a comfort zone,” some pattern or practice that will bring success in a high-pressure business.

Current Angel relief pitcher Bryan Harvey has a ritual with gum and tobacco, Blake said. “He’ll spread four sticks of gum in his hand, take a big fistful of tobacco, put it in the middle, make a big ball of it, stick it in his mouth and chew it for three innings. The fourth inning, he’ll spit it out, make a trip to the head, come back and do the whole thing again. In the seventh inning, he’ll do it one last time. This is the gamer. He’ll keep it in his mouth and chew it till the game is over, regardless of whether it lasts nine innings or 19.”

The beauty of baseball literature is that it reads the same whether the stories are fact or fiction. So when Blake recounts the story about the turn-of-the-century Hall of Famer who eventually couldn’t load up his spitball because the opposing team’s batboy before the game had dipped all the baseballs in horse manure, you laugh whether the story is true or not.

Or, how about the relief pitcher who wears black bikini underwear sent to him by his grandmother?

Hey, as Casey Stengel used to say, “You can look it up.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.