don't jinx the man...

The quirky Boggs was one of the most superstitious players baseball has ever seen: he awoke at the same time every morning, ate chicken before every game (Jim Rice nicknamed him "Chicken Man"), and took exactly 150 ground balls during infield practice.

Wade Boggs won his third consecutive batting title in 1987(.363). That was right around the time I was playing a lot of softball: three teams and tournaments on the weekends. I tried the chicken diet since "chicken had hits". It didn't do a thing for my hitting. But, it did make me realize that I had some rituals. Twenty years on, I can't really remember them.

But, fast forward to the 90s and cycling. I have rituals now that I can quickly recall. When I started racing, I wouldn't: 1) wash my bike before a race and 2) I wouldn't eat pork. These superstitious rituals resulted from having bad races after the events. For obvious reason, I have never seen the cycling DVD "Crash". Sometimes if I feel like really don't want to ride, I won't. Who knows, something might happen, and I didn't really want to be out there anyway.

One time, we were on our way to a race. I always leave plenty of time to get to the race. This particular race, we had lots of time. As we drove to the race, my truck got a flat tire. As we waited for the AAA person to arrive, we both secretly thought of bagging the race; however, neither one of us said a thing to each other. The AAA person arrived, fixed the flat, and off we were to the Morgan Hill crit. To make a long story short, my crit ended a few laps early, and I got a ride in the ambulance to the hospital. Nothing serious, but still, I didn't really want to race that day.

ZsaZsa is often pretty amused at my superstitous ways. She will ask "are you supersitious", and I will say "no". Truly believing that I am not.

Anyway, I really want Floyd to win tomorrow and I want him in yellow on Sunday, but I don't want to do anything that might jinx him. I just cringe and get very anxious when Bob goes out on a limb with his predictions. I think of the jinx, but so far Floyd has been pretty immune. Oops...I hope I didn't screw things up.