Paramont Pictures / Shooting Star

The mysterious rituals of Pedro Serrano in the 1989 comedy Major League helped inspire the celluloid Cleveland Indians to an improbable pennant.

Thus it has been for generations. While football, basketball, and other sports have been transformed by rule changes, mass marketing, and the superior athleticism of modern contestants, part of baseball’s enduring appeal is the sense that the game seems timeless. For fans, how the contests are played is little changed from the time Babe Ruth started swatting home runs.

Evidence of that quality comes in the superstitions that are as much a part of the game as batting averages and Cracker Jacks. Even the most sophisticated athletes have been known to give in to the power of superstition as an aid to winning or avoiding injury; it’s a crutch, a secret weapon to solicit that small advantage needed for victory. Most are quick to deny it, claiming they simply follow a certain routine. Outfielder Rick Monday once explained, “I don’t believe in superstitions; I think they’re bad luck.”

But routine becomes superstition when one feels it must be followed to ensure good luck. Tampa Bay Devil Ray third baseman Wade Boggs, striving to become the next member of the sport’s illustrious 3,000 career hits club, is a study in superstition, embracing perhaps eighty strict practices on and off the field. He claims his hitting prowess comes from chicken, prepared fifty different ways by his wife. He developed an exact and intricate time/routine system, minute by minute, from leaving his house until game’s end. He has a fixation on the numbers 7 and 17 (in 1984, he signed a contract for $717,000) and formed the habit of drawing a chai, the Hebrew symbol for “life,” in the box before hitting. “Everyone has a routine,” concludes Boggs. “Mine just takes five hours.”

Though Boggs may be an extreme example, when it comes to quirky practices among ballplayers, he is not alone.

Beer barrels to Murine

In the last twenty-five years, baseball’s salary structure has skyrocketed. Now, even weak-hitting reserve infielders may sign contracts paying them a million dollars a year. Still, the old ways persist.