Today was the season opener for the Beloved Blue Jays against the Hardscrabble Rangers. For the first 6 1/3 innings Shaun Marcum didn't allow a hit (though he did walk one batter and hit another). Despite not having pitched for a year, he was cruising towards one of the rarest feats in baseball, the opening day no-hitter - it's only happened once.
There is a tradition in baseball that when someone is cruising towards a no-hitter or perfect game where no one speaks to them, nor does anyone mention what is happening.
The logic is that you don't want to take the player out of his zone.
The superstition is that you don't want to anger the baseball gods, to whom we are like wanton flies (look it up, kids, look it up. It works on a couple of levels).
Today on twitter there was a mild heart attack by all baseball people when those who should know better, including Blue Jays beat writer Jordan Bastian and Roger's Sportsnet's Buck Martinez (currently the second worst manager the Jays have had not named 'Cito'), actually said the word aloud. "Oh, but it doesn't matter," they say, "it won't affect the game."
No, it won't. And it also won't impact my life at all. But...that's the point. Nothing I can do will influence the game, and nothing in the game will actually change my life. So why have a superstition handed down from baseball generation to baseball generation.
There's a scene in Glengarry Glenn Ross when Roma berates Williamson for speaking out of turn and costing him a sale - "You don't open your mouth 'less you know the score". It's the same with everything in life - you don't count your chickens, etc.
Williamson isn't the only one who makes this mistake as not two seconds later Levene, joining the dogplile on Williamson, opens his mouth without knowing the score and manages to incriminate himself in the robbery of the office. Levene is a wily veteran fallen on hard times who taught Roma everything he knows, including (we can assume) that very adage.
Baseball is a game of skill or training, but it's also a game of luck. It's a game of bounces, breezes and bumps. For every great play in history there's the sheer flukiness of the ball bouncing off of Jose Canseco's head, Bill Bucker misjudging a routine ground ball, or the Merkle Boner. It happens. It's part of the charm of baseball - it breaks your heart as it heals someone else's. It's the Wheel of Fortune, spinning in the same rotation as a nasty breaking ball.
And you don't temp the fates. You respect them.
I don't care that you don't think it matters but if you study the game and report on it, you should one that one of the allures of it are these traditions, these unwritten rules. It's a game where people embrace rally caps, videos of monkeys, "Sweet Caroline", and french fries (look it up...I'll give you a hint...Mariners). You should know that what people love about it is the mix of athleticism, drama, and the fact that as you watch the game you can play strategy along with it - you are engaged.
But it's a game of chaos. We respect the chaos, but also don't want to surrender to it so we try to find some order so we don't feel as helpless. It's why it's the most stats heavy of any game, because we want to try to quantify the luck. It's why there are great legends and superstitions around the game because there are so many things that CANNOT be quantified, and we don't want to surrender to that. One of those ways we do that is by not opening our mouths until we know the score - 'less we expose ourselves and our team.
In the end, The Beloved Jays lost 5-4. We all knew there was a nary a chance that Marcum was going to pitch the no-hitter. But there's that word: Chance. And as long as there is a chance, there is hope. And where there is hope, there is also the belief that we can influence what we cannot control even if it is completely irrational.
That's the score.
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