Superstitious Athletes

JAKE'S JOUST
David James suckered me into watching Talkin' Sports Sunday night. I heard him plugging the segment twice. Once on the Jazz post-game show and the other on a news promo earlier that day. The segment was about different player's superstitions, but particularly Carlos Boozer's obsession with touching the ball every chance he gets.

This caught my interest so I recorded it thinking there would be information that I could not live without. Like an idiot, after watching nearly 4 hours of the Academy Awards, I started watching David James' little weasel face, acting just as excited for this segment as before.

Here it is the moment we've all been waiting for..... Booze says that it's just a habit, and that he likes touching the ball. Wow David James! I understand that you were sent out to the Jazz shootaround to get to the bottom of something fairly interesting, but when you found that there was nothing at all interesting about it, did you give up and say "That's ok we'll just talk sports"? No, you continued to excite me, and like the little gullible moron that I am, I trusted you enough to record it. How dare you?
Jake


SEANS SPOT
Well I was equally disappointed to hear that the only reason Boozer grabs the ball every chance he gets, is because he likes to touch the ball. Haha. I thought there would be some weird story behind it.

I have a few superstitions of my own, they're very weird but I just can't help it. First of all I don't tie my shoes until right before it's time to play. Whenever we had games, I would warm up with untied shoes and only tie them a few minutes before gametime. I have a few more but I think a lot of guys do. One guy on my team wore the same socks whenever he had a good game.

Here are a few of the best superstitions we could find.

-Pro baseball player Turk Wendell had to chew 4 peices of black licorice every inning. When he went to the dugout, he would brush his teeth each inning, then put in 4 new peices of licorice. He also would take a huge leap over the baseline every time he crossed it, and would draw 3 crosses in the mound every time he went out.

-Another MLB player, Kevin Rhomberg was famous for having to touch back anyone that touched him. Sometimes he would wait when the inning ended for the players to run back to the duggout, and run the player down to tag him back. He also never made a right turn, if he had to turn right, he would circle to his left. NO JOKE! Google it, the dude was like Zoolander.

-Caron Butler chewed McDonald's straws each game. He went through thousands of straws each season. He was recently told by the NBA to stop though.

-NHL player Bruce Gardiner began dipping his hockey stick in toilets before the game, to help him score goals. Eventually he quit doing this before every game, but would continue to do it if he was in a scoring slump.

-Jason Terry of the Mavericks wears a pair of his opponents shorts to bed the night before each game.

These are some of the weirdest. Comment below on any superstitions you might have. Let us know what kind of rituals you have if any.
Sean