Bambino's Curse

Guess Who's Back? Back Again

I'm doing cartwheels.

Regarding Pedro's batting practice session of the mound yesterday we hear:

Manager Grady Little, who took over midway through spring training last year, watched yesterday's session in awe.

"Between last year when I first saw him and right now, there's no comparison," he said. "He's so much better. There's a confident look in his face and you can tell there's no concern of an injury right now" (Horrigan, Herald).

This is going to be one long mofo month of waiting for Opening Day.

Very Superstitious (Nothin' More to Say)

You know the only negative I get about this blog involves its name, Bambino's Curse. Some people get their proverbial panties in a bunch just by the title: "How can you believe in that crap?" is the ongoing theme.

And on those occasions when I actually venture out of the cold, sterile, Aristotelian/Cartesian world where all things are subject to facts, figures, and mathematical proof and dare admit that I do proscribe here and there to a more metaphysical side of things, well, people really get flustered with me.

Remember this comment from reader Sean following my last such post?

"Hello mystical garbage, goodbye me from reading this blog."

While I respect, indeed encourage, a person's right to voice disagreement with my views or to even refuse to take a link to this blog because of the title, I am perplexed by what seems to me to be either ignorance of or denial that superstition is an integral part of the game of baseball.

Our own Red Sox have one of the most superstitious players in the game in Nomar Garciaparra. You certainly have seen the way he goes up and down the dugout steps, right, making certain to touch each step with each foot? And you may recall that in his senior year at Georgia Tech, while playing in the College World Series, Nomar's spikes were held together by duct tape. Why? Well, they were worn out, sole completely separated from the rest, but he refused to get a new pair for fear of jinx.

And who can forget Wade Boggs who had to eat chicken before every game?

Now we find that Derek Lowe has his own superstitious ritual:

It all begins with a cup of french vanilla iced coffee and a coffee roll.

In a ritual that blossomed last year in his breakout season as a Red Sox starter … Lowe begins each day he pitches at Fenway Park by stopping at the Dunkin' Donuts near his home south of Boston for his coffee and roll …

Over the course of a season Lowe increasingly persuaded himself that his excellence stemmed in no small part from his habitual breakfast and pregame lunch as much as his portfolio of pitches… He filed away the no-hitter he tossed April 27 against the Devil Rays - the first no-hitter at Fenway in 37 years - as compelling evidence.

Thus, a pregame stop at Bertucci's in Kenmore Square. By now, Lowe has become such a regular that he can walk into the restaurant before each of his starts, slide into his favorite seat, and soon receive his signature order: three-cheese ravioli, a tossed salad, bread, and lemonade (Hohler, Globe).

There you have it. Nothin' more to say.

So before one of you rushes to fire off an email to me decrying my foolishness, my pagan like ignorance, or whatever else you want to call it, don't forget about Derek Lowe and Nomar and all the hundreds of other ballplayers who are prone to such irrational behavior.

If some players are superstitious, how can you be surprised to find that some fans are as well?

Like Captain Louis Renault's famous line regarding gambling taking place at Rick's Cafe in Casablanca, I say, "I'm shocked - shocked - to find superstition in baseball!"

Things That Go Bump in the Night

"I would think," one club executive said last week in Arizona, "that George [Steinbrenner] would sooner pay Mendoza $5 million to stay home than allow him to sign with Boston, if he was afraid Mendoza could still hurt him."

Despite Ramiro Mendoza being the off season addition to the Red Sox roster I'm most excited about, I'd be fooling myself if I said I don't wonder the same regarding the Yankees letting him walk.

We shall know who got the better end of this deal soon enough.

Recollections

"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders." — William Faulkner, Light in August.

I got choked up reading the memories several of you left in response to yesterday's post. Even in the relatively small collection of fans represented there, we get a feel for the historicity incumbent to Red Sox fandom. While my own earliest Red Sox memory deals with Yaz in 1968, another of you has an earliest memory of Yaz but from the day his uniform was retired! This passing and building of collective Red Sox memory from one generation to the next is special and worthy of both introspection and nurturing.

And I'm astounded at how much nostalgia and romanticism is packed into a single childhood memory. Take Ryan Jordan's recollection for example,

My earliest vivid memory of being a Sox fan involved the one game playoff in '78. My family was driving driving home from Pennsylvania as the game was taking place. AM radio fading in and out as we were heading back to New Hampshire, so we would catch maybe every 3 word. "And...Jim...steps into....box...one for....with...strikeout" Just impossible to follow the game, and the score is about all we knew. …

Here not only is my own memory of that fateful afternoon game brought back, but also a rush of memories of all the times I was in car listening to a Sox game with bad reception … and then earlier memories come, the memory of the cars my parents had in the early70s, the smell of the cars even, a mixture of tobacco smoke, leaded gasoline and worn naugahyde. I'm in the backseat, seven or eight years old, it's July sunshine Saturday afternoon, all the car windows are down, the V8 of my dad's Dodge Coronet purrs throaty and macho, Ned Martin coming out of the radio, I'm hoping maybe my mom and dad will take me to that new place in town called McDonald's for fries…

Beautiful.

My memories and your memories are all woven together with an strong Red Sox thread. Really does choke me up. Really does make me feel part of something tremendous.

Go read them for yourself, and leave your own recollection if you haven't already.

What a great game baseball is and what a great team we root for.

Suffer the Children

Welcome to the heartbreak club, kids.

As these young fans begin to take on the responsibility and mortal coil that comes with being a Red Sox fan, let's review from a mental health perspective, how best to share grief with children:

Age 0-6
Their main concern at this age is abandonment Children are very egocentric at this age… If they aren't personally touched by the death, they won't grieve.

Children of this age also have highly developed “honesty monitors.” If you tell them “Grandma has gone to heaven,” but you don't actually believe in heaven, you will only confuse and frighten them. [For instance, you probably shouldn't tell them, then, that "this is the year" or "the Yankees suck" --Ed.]

Age 6-9
They now understand the concept of mortality and this can cause anxiety about their own death and that of parents, relatives and friends. Promising a child that you or they will never die is inappropriate and may give them a sense of personal power that leads them to act in unsafe ways. At the same time, you need to communicate, through your own life, that while death is inevitable, life itself needs to be enjoyed.

Chin up youngsters. Maybe in your lifetime there is a Red Sox World Series pennant waiting to unfurl. In the meantime, there is perseverance in the face of mortality.

What is your earliest Red Sox memory as a kid?

Rebirth