The danger of superstition

As you probably already know, baseball players are some of the most superstitious people on earth.  I read a sociological study one time that discussed cultures and their likelihood of being superstitious as a people.  It basically comes down to how

much “luck” or “chance” the people believe is involved in their success.  In light of this, it’s easy to see why baseball players are very superstitious.  A bad hop that turns a weak grounder into a base hit, a line drive right at someone, a flare to right field that just lands between three defenders, a pop-up that gets wind blown into a home run, and the list goes on and on.  Lots of events that are totally out of a player’s control.

Superstitions like putting on your uniform the same way before every game, keeping to the same routine before every at-bat, tapping your spikes twice for good luck, and a pitcher never touching the foul line on his way out to the mound are just some of the many acts that hope to reward the player with good luck.  Most are just good-natured fun and part of the tradition of baseball.  However, there can be a downside to all this as well.  Let’s use a batter for example.

Too much superstition on the part of a batter leads the hitter away from information he needs to know or at least think about.  Every batter needs to give some thought to and eventually know why he is having good at-bats and why he is not.  This is an important part of hitting.  It all involves taking responsibility for your at-bats.  Knowing why your at-bat was a good one allows the hitter to repeat whatever it was that was identified as positive.  Recognizing what was poor about an at-bat allows the player to make an immediate adjustment to avoid the mistake again.

Superstitions do not allow this process to occur.  Too much belief in superstition or luck can cause a batter to think that his good and bad at-bats were more a result of coincidence or chance rather than something he controlled himself.

Making innocent superstition part of a routine is fine to a certain degree.  Routines can be great for improving confidence in high pressure situations so tapping the spikes twice before the at-bat is not a problem.  The problem comes when the hitter believes that his poor at-bat was caused by not tapping the spikes or something else on the trivial side.  When a player does this, he is hiding behind superstition and not taking responsibility for his own at-bats.