Tell me you haven’t all done this a time or 50.
You’re watching a game, and you know which team you want to win … and they get off to a good start … and you decide that your actions — at home — somehow are responsible.
It’s an internalization of the panoply of superstitions athletes take to events. The difference being you’re not an athlete and can have no impact on the game.
Or can you?
I wondered, all the way to the bottom of the sixth inning today of the Dodgers’ playoffs game in Philadelphia.
The ballgame started at about 8:30 in the morning, in Hong Kong. I got out of my (latest) bed, the one at the bachelor pad in Wan Chai, and turned on the TV — and was pleased to find the game on ESPN’s international feed. And the Dodgers already ahead 1-0, bottom first.
(Sidebar: If we haven’t already ID’d this place as a guy’s home, he appears to get about 25 stations on his cable deal … and at least 10 of them are sports stations. Maybe 15. And I’m thinking everything else he gets is free. Like Al-Jazeera.)
Anyway, I was going to log on, check my mail, maybe blog … and then I noticed the Dodgers were already ahead. So I watched for an inning or two, and they were playing about as well as they can play, with Blake DeWitt making nice plays, and Manny Ramirez (!) cutting off a ball in left field to keep it from going to the wall and setting up a double play a moment later.
And I decided, for no good reason (certainly no sane reason) that maybe I was affecting the game by not logging on. That if I did nothing but sit quietly the Dodgers might win.
(And yes, I know I’ve said I don’t like this team, and I don’t, really, but they were playing well and this is the postseason, so instinct and decades of preference have overpowered judgment.)
I sat on the couch here, in the little living room/kitchen, watching the plasma TV about eight feet from me, and did nothing. Didn’t log on, didn’t eat. Just sat.
Some people wear lucky hats. Jerseys. Some go through lengthy rituals. All in the sake of appeasing the baseball/football/soccer gods. And I was worshiping at that altar.
The Dodger went up 2-0. Bloop double by Kemp, ground ball gets him to third, flyball scores him. And Derek Lowe is rolling.
I was going to ride this out because, you know, maybe I had something to do with it. My sitting on the couch, not logged on.
Then Lowe gave up a single to the Phillies catcher, the No. 8 hitter, with two outs in the bottom of the eighth — and he was never the same. He had been great up till then, then he just melted. He reacted as if he had just lost a perfect game with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.
He gave up a single to the pitcher, when he had two strikes on him. He got out of the inning, but his concentration was broken. You could tell by how he kept stepping off the mound, and summoning catcher Russell Martin to meet with him to discuss, whatever. Perhaps to talk about how he was losing his cool.
Still, I sat. Watching. Bottom six, still 2-0. I’m winning this game for L.A. from the other side of the Pacific.
Would anyone realize it, except me?
Then Raffy Furcal rushed a throw on a Shane Victorino ground ball, and it went for an error to open the bottom of the sixth. Victorino at second. Lowe should have just focused on the hitter, forgotten about the runner, because if that guy scores (and he probably will, at second with no outs), it’s still 2-1.
Instead, Lowe went back to his heaving and sighing and general distress signs — and gave up a two-run homer to Chase Utley. He got Ryan Howard, but then he got one on the inner half of the plate to Pat Burrell, who knows what to do with belt-high mistakes like that. He drove it into the left-field seats, a rocket so powerful that Manny didn’t really bother going back on it.
It’s 3-2. And clearly whatever I was doing or not doing wasn’t impacting a game in Philadelphia, half a world away.
I went on with my day, and the Dodgers went on to lose, 3-2.
I had a feeling about this game. Well, this is another feeling … that this was the key game in the series. If the Dodgers win, they take home field from the Phillies, they stoke the sense that they somehow are a team of destiny, etc.
The Phillies win, we all (including the Dodgers) reexamine the situation and realize the Phillies have a far more impressive lineup than do the Dodgers … seriously dangerous hitters all the way to the 6 hole. We notice they aren’t missing their closer, as the Dodgers are. That the Phillies haven’t lost a game this season with a lead after eight innings.
Well, that’s what happened, the Dodgers’ momentum going “poof.” The Dodgers’ pixie dust may just have been brushed off them. And perhaps they are mortal again, as they were during that 84-78 regular season.
Hey, I did what I could.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Dave Gaytan // Oct 10, 2008 at 7:22 AM
I never blamed or credited anything I ever did, but was quick to put it onto the actions of others.
In 1986, I was working at the old KDIG/1240. The station was the Inland Empire affiliate of the Angel radio network. In the legendary Game 5 of the ALCS game against the Red Sox, the so-called “Donnie Moore Game”, Angels were up 7-5 in the top of the 9th. Two were out. Mike Witt pitching. Long story short, the morning DJ calls me. In those pre-cell, pre-cordless phone days, I had to leave the living room to answer the phone. He starts talking about the Angel pennant, and the extra World Series broadcasts, and so on, and when I come back, not only had Witt been replaced, but Gary Lucas had already hit Wade Boggs, and I had just missed Dave Henderson’s home run. I was so pissed that he called at that time.
Of course, it had no effect on what happened at Anaheim that day, but I had a temporary mindset at the time where I was wondering if all that would have happened if he hadn’t called.
A year earlier, a clueless girlfriend called right smack in the middle of Game 7 of the ’85 World Series between the KC Royals and the St. Louis Cards. After a back and forth exchange, where I tried to explain to her that I was in for the night, and wanted to watch the game, she convinced me to come over and be with her. On the way over, I got to hear Joachin Andujar’s meltdown with Don Denkinger and all the accompanying chaos, and the subsequent Cardinal unraveling of the game. Thanks a lot, sweetie!
Everytime it’s been shown on ESPN Classic, I usually watch and get angry all over again because I didn’t get to see it live, and for such a foolish reason.
I learned my lesson. I quit taking phone calls during games.
2 Luis Bueno // Oct 10, 2008 at 9:13 AM
I blame myself for Orlando never winning an NBA Finals. I have always been a huge Shaq fan and was excited to see him in the finals in, what, 1995? Anyway Orlando was handling Houston at home in Game 1 I believe. It wasn’t because the Magic were playing great defense or hitting clutch shots, it was because I sat in the same position for the entire game. Clearly I had given them the edge they needed. At the end of the game Nick Anderson had some freethrows to hit that would have iced the game. Excited as I was I stood up. Screw my position, this game was in the bag! Except something horrible happened when I stood up. Nick Anderson missed his attempts. Can’t remember if it was three or four but he choked the game away and eventually the series was lost as well. All because of me.
3 Dennis Pope // Oct 10, 2008 at 11:52 AM
Internalizing the causes-and-effects of your team is one of the truly mind-numbing things about sports. I used to feel that way about the Angels, the Lakers, etc. but I realized something while attending Game 5 of the 2002 ALCS, when the Angels beat the Twins to advance to their first World Series… that’ll it all happens, the home runs, the dunks, with or without you and that the only thing that matters is celebrating the good and lamenting the bad. Or vice-versa. It’s sports, and short of throwing a soda at Ron Artest, nothing you can do as a fan will prevent the game from being played.
4 Char Ham // Oct 11, 2008 at 5:41 AM
A co-worker said she blames herself for the Dodgers losing this game but watching the whole game. Every time she watches a whole game on TV, the Dodgers lose. At least that what she claims.
5 George Alfano // Oct 12, 2008 at 7:09 PM
I blame myself for the New Jersey Devils losing in the 1988 Stanley Cup Semifinals to the Boston Bruins.
It was Game 3, and I invited a girlfriend over to watch the game. She liked baseball so I figured she would like hockey. The Devils were losing, 5-1, and she didn’t want to watch the third period and, trying to be an obliging host, I turned the game off.
After the game, the Devils coach ended up going after the ref and he ended up getting suspended for a game later in the series. The Devils lost the series 4-3, and I have always blamed myself.
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