Some of us have a superstition or routine that we follow without second-guessing it. For example, to avoid seven years of bad luck, you may toss salt over your shoulder after knocking over a salt shaker. Superstitions and routines are a way of life and are common when it comes to baseball. Baseball players tend to be among the most superstitious people you’ll ever meet.
The Orion sat down with three members of the baseball team to discuss their unusual game day habits:
The Orion: Baseball players tend to be superstitious; do you have a superstition or routine that you go through before a game?
Josh Falco: The first one I can think of is at Cuesta College. Our coach would always make us shave before a game, we had to shine our shoes and shine our helmets to prepare for the game. That’s something I’ll carry over here.
Andrew Carillo: Superstitions, no. I always like to say superstitions are bad luck. That’s a little joke of mine. I do have a routine I like to go through. I wouldn’t call it a superstition, I’d call it more of a routine.
Hunter Haworth: One of the big ones would be that I tie my cleats, then I untie them. Then I tie them again. That’s before I pitch. That’s it. Before a game, if I’m not pitching, then nothing.
The Orion: What is your routine during the game? What happens when the routine works, do you try to do the same in your next at bat or inning?
Falco: If I get a hit when I bat, I have to do the same exact thing in the on deck circle. Every time, I have to. If I swing some player’s bat in the on deck circle, because I swing two bats, and he gets a hit before me, I’m swinging his bat because that’s the bat with the hits in it. If I have a bad game I have to do something different for the next game, clean my shoes differently or wear a different pair of socks. Anything to get a win. If it’s going good, stay the same. If it’s not, there’s something I got to change up.
Carillo: No that’s bad luck, I try just to play in the moment and not really think too much about results. I don’t really try to copy a swing or anything like that, I just go with the flow. I like to put my left sock before my right sock. That’s one of them. I like to visualize the game that day and what’s going to happen and what pitches I’m going to see. I put my right cleat first before my left cleat. When I bat I like to put on my leg guard first, then I put my elbow guard, then I put on my right batting glove, then I put on my left batting glove. Then I put my helmet on and that’s it.
Haworth: I sit in the same spot and put glove in the exact same place that it was every inning. So when I come in off the mound and I sit down in a certain spot, and I put my glove there and I go back out and have a good inning, I go and sit and put my glove in the same place.
Carlos Islas can be reached at [email protected] or @cIslasReports on Twitter.
