Latest / Abide Meditation App / Why Baseball Players Are So Superstitious

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Why Baseball Players Are So Superstitious · Abide Meditation App

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: In the late nineteen seventies, Tiger Stadium, home of the
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Detroit Tigers, transformed into an anthropology classroom. Fans would have
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: watched their pitcher mark the bird, Fidrich deep in conversation
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: with his baseball, look happing to that. Fidrich believed that
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: every baseball had its own life, its own predetermined quota
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: of hits, so he'd talked to the baseball before the pitch,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: giving it instructions. He'd also get on his hands and
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: knees and engage in, let's say, a ritualized cleansing of
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: the mound, sweeping away his cleat marks to ensure that
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: it was just right for his next pitch. Fidrich is
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: far from the only example of elaborate baseball rituals. Shortstop
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Nomar Garciapara had a meticulous pre at bat routine, adjusting
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: and readjusting his batting gloves before each pitch. Some settle
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: into their batting stance in the exact same way every
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: single time, like former Phillies first baseman Ryan Howard. Right
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: fielder Larry Walker was captivated by the number three he wore.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: The number thirty three would set his alarm clock at
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: thirty three past the hour and made sure that his
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: wedding vows took place on November third, at precisely three
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: thirty three. This all stretches back to the earliest decades
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: of the game, with baseball players ritually arranging bats, moving
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: things back and forth on the field, and spitting in
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: their gloves. From the rally cap to meticulous batting stances
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: to announcers refusing to mention a no hitter before it happens,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: baseball has been thoroughly imbued with taboos and rituals, and
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: anthropologists of religion have noticed. Back in the nineteen seventies,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: the anthropologist George Gimelch suggested that these actions are not
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: mere superstition, but an example of a universal human tendency
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: to use ritual to manage uncertainty and exert a semblance
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: of control in unpredictable situations. In the high stakes realm
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: of professional baseball, uncertainty is the only constant, and rituals
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: become vital psychological anchors that ground the players. In other words,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: players turn to baseball magic. George Gammelch has had an
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: unlikely career path for an academic from professional baseball player
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: to professional anthropologist. Back in the sixties, he played for
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: the Tigers organization, but then he took a college class
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: on magic, religion, and witchcraft that changed his life. In
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: this class, he learned about one of the first anthropologists
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: to critically examine why people do magical rituals, Bronislav Malinovsky.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: In the early twentieth century, Malinovsky studied the people of
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: the Trobrian Islands, now part of the country of Papua
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: New Guinea in the Western Pacific. One of his more
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: long lasting contributions to anthropology came from observing the islander's
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: fishing practices. When fishing outside of the lagoon on the
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: open sea, the Trobrian fishermen performed elaborate rituals aiming to
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: ensure their safety and a big catch. In contrast, no
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: such rituals were performed when fishing in the safer, more
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: predictable lagoon. Malinofsky theorized that these rituals were a way
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: to deal with the uncertainty and danger of open sea fishing.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: His observations influenced later generations of anthropologists who study magic
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: and cultures all over the world. Certain types of rituals
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: seem to appear around liminal, uncertain or dangerous moments in
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: everyday life. In the world of Greco Roman magic, for example,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: we see rituals like protective incantations and amulets that aim
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: to protect women during childbirth, curse tablets that attempt to
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: destroy rival business owners, or healing incantations to get rid
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: of a migraine. These are the kind of small, mundane
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: rituals that were created to deal with the crises that
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: people face in everyday life. As soon as Gimelch heard
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: about Malinovsky in his college classroom, his thoughts immediately went
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: to baseball. A professional baseball game certainly ranks high on
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: the list of uncertain situations, careers hinge on a single pitch,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: a single swing, a single overzealous fan getting in the way,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: and unsurprisingly, in this social context, we see a ton
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: of baseball magic ritual behavior which does not have a
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: clear technical function in the execution of skill, yet which
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: is believed to control other external factors. GAMELLZ focused on baseball,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: but we see this in all types of sports. Consider
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Maria Sharapova, the Russian tennis player who won an Olympic
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: medal and was considered one of the best players of
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: her generation. Sharapova was famous for her highly particular pre
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: serve routine. Although it evolved over the years, there were
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: several key features. Sharapova typically started by turning her back
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: to the court, pacing a few steps, and adjusting her strings.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Before approaching the baseline, she would brush her hair behind
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  Speaker 1: her ears left side and then right, then slowly and
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: deliberately bounce the ball, usually twice, before finally winding up
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  Speaker 1: for the serve. Serena Williams, also considered one of the
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: greatest tennis players of all time, also had pregame and
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: pre serve routines. For example, she generally bounced the ball
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: exactly five times on her first serve. During an interview,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: she even jokingly blamed Alas on failing to follow through
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: with her rituals. What happened, I didn't tell my shoes
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: right and I didn't do it five times. Some scholars
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: call these sets of ritual behaviors pre performance routines, or pprs,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: a systematic sequence of actions that players do before their
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: performance of a specific athletic skill. Researchers have suggested that
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: pre performance routines are effective because they number one enhance concentration.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Two they combat what's called warm up decrement, which is
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: when a player's performance deteriorates due to a delay or pause.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: And third, they aid an automatic skill execution. In other words,
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  Speaker 1: pre performance routines prevent the athlete from overthinking and trying
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  Speaker 1: to consciously control what's already in innate skill. Scholars go further
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: and distinguish between causally opaque versus causally transparent actions. There's
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: a very transparent reason why a basketball player might pretend
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: to shoot a free throw a few times before actually
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  Speaker 1: attempting it, or why a batter will take a few
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: practice swings before stepping into the box. They're similar the
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: actual thing they're about to attempt. But there are other
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  Speaker 1: athletic rituals where the relationship to the performance is much
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  Speaker 1: more opaque. There is no transparent causal connection between talking
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: to the ball before a pitch, or hitting your cleats
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: with your bat, or refusing to shave your beard to
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: maintain a winning streak, or kissing the ball. Have I
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: mentioned there's a lot of kissing. The connection between these
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  Speaker 1: actions and a successful execution of your task is opaque,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: seemingly less empirical magical thinking, if you will. Some of
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Sharapova's pre performance rituals are causally transparent, like getting hair
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  Speaker 1: out of your eyes, while others are causally opaque, like
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: emphatically bouncing the ball exactly twice. Interestingly, at least one
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: study found that there may be very little performance difference
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: when using a more causally transparent method like a PPR
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  Speaker 1: and a completely opaque strategy like wearing lucky socks, touching
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  Speaker 1: a lucky pendant, or wearing a golden thongb like Yankees
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  Speaker 1: Jason Jiambi was known to do whenever he needed to
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: break out of a slump. Both strategies worked, and performance
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: was worse without either. Following Malinowsky, Gemelch argued that athletes
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: developed ritualized behaviors, many of them highly personal and idiosyncratic,
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  Speaker 1: many of them causally opaque, as a way to create
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  Speaker 1: a sense of control and predictability in this high stress,
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  Speaker 1: high uncertainty environment. He noted that we especially see high
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: levels of ritualization among pitchers and batters, not among fielders.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: He argued this is because fielding has much less uncertainty,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: he says, compared with the pitcher or the hitter. The
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: fielder has little to worry about. He knows that in
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: better than nine point seven times out of ten, he
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: will execute his task flawlessly. Meanwhile, batters and pitchers are
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: under near constant stress and uncertainty with pitch after pitch
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: after pitch. Even the best pitch can be crushed for
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: a base hit, or maybe a batter makes great contact
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: but the ball goes straight to an outfielder. Goalies and
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: ice hockey, who are basically in a state of near
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: constant awareness and expectation, likewise, have been shown to engage
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  Speaker 1: in higher levels of ritual behavior. Gamelch published his article
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Baseball Magic in nineteen seventy one, even before Fidrich took
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: the mound chatting with his baseball. But ever since then,
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  Speaker 1: Gemelch's uncertainty hypothesis has been corroborated by psychologists and anthropologists
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: across all sports. Athletes engage in ritual behavior more when
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: the outcome of a situation is increasingly uncertain. A controlled
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: experiment published in twenty eleven found that athletes do more
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  Speaker 1: rituals when facing tougher opponents or when the stakes are higher,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: like during the playoffs. Moreover, high level competitors, like professional athletes,
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  Speaker 1: are more likely to engage in ritual behavior compared to
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  Speaker 1: low level or amateur athletes. Other studies have backed this up,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: demonstrating that whether we're talking about a golf putt or
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: a free throw shot, elite athletes take a much longer
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  Speaker 1: time with their preshot routines compared to less elite athletes,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: and Olympic medal winners have much more consistent pre performance
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  Speaker 1: routines compared to non metallists. The researchers concluded that sports
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: related rituals reduce psychological tension in elite players. In other words,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: the rituals regulate emotions and help to switch from a
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  Speaker 1: negative to positive mindset in the face of immense pressure
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  Speaker 1: and stress. A ritual is something you can control, and
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  Speaker 1: that sense of control matters. One team of researchers found
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: that even completely arbitrary daily rituals can help mitigate negative
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: emotional responses to failure. In other words, people who do
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: more rituals experience less negativity when they mess up, which
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: makes ritualized behaviors something like an emotional regulatory tool. This
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: might help to explain baseball magic. Even a very good
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: batter is only going to hit the ball one out
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  Speaker 1: of every three trips to the plate, so they experience
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: a ton of failure. But because rituals can function as
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: a palliative against anxiety and failure, as the researchers put it,
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  Speaker 1: these baseball rituals may dull the negative emotional response, keeping
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  Speaker 1: your mind clear and ready to deal with the next performance,
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  Speaker 1: the next app bat, the next serve. What's interesting is
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  Speaker 1: that the study also found that the rituals didn't help
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  Speaker 1: or hinder actual performance, but they did seem to help
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: achieve an optimal mental comfort zone. In fact, the body
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: of research on this topic is not all that clear
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  Speaker 1: to what degree sports magic actually helps. There are so
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: many confounding factors that play, like the skill of the
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  Speaker 1: athlete and the unique conditions of any given game, but
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  Speaker 1: scholars generally agree that cognitive factors like a perceived sense
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  Speaker 1: of control over situation and less anxiety can improve our
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  Speaker 1: performance in sports, and rituals have been shown to enhance
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  Speaker 1: these mental states. Some athletes have said as much. The
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: tennis player Rafael Nadal engages in a bunch of ritualized behavior.
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  Speaker 1: He always ensures that his water bottles are perfectly aligned.
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  Speaker 1: He jumps up and down at the net during coin tosses,
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  Speaker 1: and before serving, he touches his nose, tucks his hair
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  Speaker 1: behind his ears, and famously fixes his shorts. In his autobiography,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Nadal said, some call it superstition, but it's not. If
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: it were superstition, why would I keep doing the same
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  Speaker 1: thing over and over, whether I win or lose. It's
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: a way of placing myself in a match, ordering my
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  Speaker 1: surroundings to match the order I seek in my head.
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  Speaker 1: His own explanation for why he does all this seems
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  Speaker 1: to mirror what psychologists and anthropologists have found that rituals
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  Speaker 1: can act as a mental regulatory system, acting as a
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  Speaker 1: buffer against uncertainty and anxiety. This extends to war as well.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: The anthropologist Richard Sosis found that individuals who experienced a
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: war related trauma, like losing a family member or a
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: close friend, often engage in rituals more frequently, which appears
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: to be linked with decreased levels of anxiety. When talking
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: about baseball magic, the word superstition is thrown around a lot,
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  Speaker 1: and many athletes, when interviewed about their behavior, categorically reject
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: this term no doubt, because superstition is usually a pejorative
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: term that implies that these behaviors are ineffective or irrational.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Nadal's response to this accusation is an interesting data point
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: to scholars of religion everywhere. If it were superstition, why
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  Speaker 1: would I keep doing the same thing over and over,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: whether I win or lose. We can ask the same
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: question about the history of religion. If rituals like these
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: are so obviously irrational and lack a causal explanation, as
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  Speaker 1: the anthropologists say, why have humans been doing magic like
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: this for thousands of years up until today? One explanation
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: is that this is due to a quirk in our
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: human cognition. This is a common argument in the cognitive
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: science of religion. For example, the anthropologist Dimitriz de Galitas
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: conducted an experiment on audiences at NCAA basketball games and
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: found that when fans see a player do a pre
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: shot ritual before a free throw, they evaluate that player
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: to be more likely to make the shot. His team
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: concluded that even in non religious contexts, people make intuitive,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: automatic judgments that rituals work, which he and other scholars
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  Speaker 1: argue is the result of an evolved cognitive bias. Though,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: as we've seen it be inaccurate to say doing a
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: ritual like kissing a ball before you throw it does
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: nothing to affect the outcome of the game. It does
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: seem to do something, at the very least, to help
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: achieve an optimal mental state in a stressful situation. In
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: the words of Harvard anthropologist Michael Jackson, yes that's actually
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: his name. If we place more emphasis on internal inductive
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: effects of magical ritual the gap between pre modern irrationality
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: and modern rationality is significantly narrowed. All human beings seek
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: to augment an increase by all means possible their capacity
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: for effectively working on the world. Thus, humans throughout history
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: have developed all manner of seemingly unproductive rituals to augment
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: their ability to thrive in a world constantly trying to
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: thwart us, especially in liminal and uncertain situations. Critically, these
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: rituals don't replace human action. It's not like the Trobrian
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: islanders chanted their open sea fishing incantation and then sat
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: back and did nothing. They still employed their expert sailing
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: and fishing skills to ensure a good catch. It's not
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: like an ancient Roman shopkeeper cursed the guy next door
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: and then stopped attempting to undercut the guy's price. In
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: the same way, the athletes that engage in sports magic
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: are not only relying on the ritual when they cleanse
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: the mound or walk a particular way before a serve.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: They're using these repetitive motions as an augment to their
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: skill and teaching us something about ritual in the process.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: As the anthropologist Stanley Tembias says, all ritual uses a
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: technique which attempts to restructure and integrate the minds and
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: emotions of the actors. All ritual, whether we're talking about baseball, magic,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: purification rituals, or burial, one of humanity's most ancient and
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: powerful rituals. I've been following the Nebula series Becoming Human
• 14:38
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• 14:46
  Speaker 1: a uniquely human ritual that reveals profound insights into the
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: evolution of how we think and are developing understanding of
• 14:53
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