Go naked on the superstition that the good guys win every race

Superstition and its kin -- curses, omens and prophecies -- have been mentioned in the media a lot lately.

That’s because the time has been ripe for us to call on them for help. They appear when circumstances occur over which we have no control. Even though we may know that there’s no correlation between throwing salt over our shoulder and warding off bad luck, it doesn’t matter. The most educated person in the world can still succumb.

Take the World Series, for example. Before last month, the Boston Red Sox hadn’t defeated the New York Yankees to get to the World Series since 1918. That’s 86 years of championship drought attributed to the curse of the Bambino. Last month the Red Sox broke the curse’s stronghold by conjuring up a totem so powerful that the team finally beat the Yankees and went on to win the baseball championship.

The players didn’t openly defy the curse, though; they respected it by wearing a disguise. Their long hair and straggly beards made them look more like NASCAR fans than professional baseball players. But they didn’t get all their help from a costume. Rituals helped too. They did things like rub their bats a certain way, touch their hat brims three times, tap the bases with their cleats. Superstition complemented their talent.

Superstitions are like Prozac: they make life bearable.

Last Thursday night, I got a phone call from my next-door neighbor Wallace. “Are you watching the game?” he asked. He was talking about the Virginia Tech versus Georgia Tech football game on ESPN. He knows me. I can’t watch a TV game if I’m emotionally involved with the team. “Go watch it now,” he shouted. “We are winning!”

When I’m in the stadium, I have rituals I can fall back on to exert some control. I stand on third downs; I high five at the right times; I have chants I can holler or say under my breath. They don’t work for TV games, however. And on TV, every bad play is 10 times worse than it is when I’m in a stadium. So when the Hokies made more than 10 bad plays during last Thursday’s game, I couldn’t watch. But I noticed a trend -- they performed better if I stayed busy in another room and checked on the score every 10 minutes. That ritual made the game watching bearable and helped the team go on to win.

For several days, the media has talked of little except who will win the presidency on Nov. 2. It’s the most important election in modern times, they say, whether it is or not.

They, too, turn to superstition to predict a race that’s too close to call. Since 1944, the fate of the candidates has been tied to the Washington Redskins performance on the football field, they reported. If that team, located in the nation’s capital, wins their last home game before the election, then the incumbent party wins the election. If the Redskins lose, then the opposing party gains the White House. On Oct. 30, 2000, the Redskins lost to the Tennessee Titans 27-21, allowing George Bush, a Republican, to defeat the incumbent party’s nominee Al Gore.

We will have to wait until after the votes are counted to see if this election’s winner is John Kerry, for the Redskins lost to the Green Bay Packers on Sunday. But maybe, the Republicans, like the Boston Red Sox will perform enough rituals to ward off the decades-old superstition and put Bush back in the White House.

To do so, Bush’s litany of rituals will have to be more powerful than Kerry’s. His socks will have to be luckier, his prayer at church more heartfelt, and his taps on the voting booth just right.