By Bruno Bornsztein
Minneapolis Star Tribune
October 8, 2003

The Yankees beat the Twins 8-1, and it was my fault.

Since I didn’t have tickets to the game, I started watching in the bottom of the second. I admit, I was a little worried about missing those first few at-bats, but I thought I could make up for it by watching with extra intensity.

Late in the game, when it looked as if it would take a spontaneous fracture of Wells’ arm for the Twins to get a hit, I started thinking about what I could do to help win the game.

“Maybe I should stop watching,” I thought.

“Maybe I should just listen on the radio.”

“What if I just turn the volume down?”

Nothing helped. As each Twins batter came up against that beast of a pitcher, their batting average looking like a soggy stalk of asparagus, I despaired more and more.

One. Two. Three. Inning over.

During the break, when they showed highlights from the first inning, I realized what was wrong.

I hadn’t watched the first inning.

Last week, when the Twins won in New York, I watched the first through the seventh innings, and they won. When the Twins swept the White Sox two weeks ago, I did the same thing. I watched the beginning of the game, but not the end.

So that explains it.

When I watch the beginning of the game, but not the end, the Twins will win. If I miss the first inning but stay all the way through the ninth, they’ll lose.

I am a perfectly sane, 21-year-old male. I have a job, a car and a serious girlfriend.

And, to be honest, I don’t even like baseball that much.

I’m not crazy.

But I have to admit that thoughts like these have actually passed through my brain many times.

The scary thing is, I really, sort-of, believe this stuff.

Sometimes I think that if I’m really into it while I’m watching, my team will “receive” my positive energy and play better. So I sit on the ground, banging my hands on the floor in rhythm with the crowd on TV.

Other times I think it’s better if I’m nonchalant, watching the game halfheartedly, to take the pressure off my team. So I pace between different rooms, pretending I’m not that interested in the game. I sit in the dining room, watching the game over the top of a newspaper, pretending to read. Like I can fool the TV into thinking I’m not watching.

Often I taunt the opposing team’s players. In last year’s playoff series against the Angels, I started calling 20-year-old pitcher Francisco Rodriguez “the boy.”

Never mind that he was the same age as me; it just seemed as if my insults, hurled at him through the TV and across thousands of miles, would affect his performance.

I can’t remember if it worked, but I do remember, with shame, that on some level, I really believed this nonsense.

It’s not just me. The attendance at Saturday’s game was almost 56,000, and I’m sure nearly every fan in the Dome thought the outcome of the game depended in some way on their behavior.

Fans poured into those blue seats wearing helmets, face-paint, and, one of the most common superstitions, unwashed articles of clothing.

I’m undefeated when I’ve worn this shirt to games, and I haven’t washed it in three years.

(The lucky underwear gets saved for the playoffs.)

Some people in the stands shuffle into different seats when the Twins are losing. I read about one woman who carried around the severed head of a Corey Koskie bobblehead doll, rubbing it for good luck.

Those people are actually in the stands. Conceivably, because of their physical proximity to the players, their combined actions could affect the outcome of the game. And everyone knows the thunderous cheering of thousands of fans at the Metrodome can change the course of a game.

But imagine the millions of people watching at home cheering or booing as if their voices might somehow reach the stadium. Imagine them sitting with their families and friends in their dens or living rooms, doing dances, changing seats after every missed pitch, or watching with their backs to the television.

It’s insane. Really. There is some element of insanity, a complete loss of rational thinking, that is involved in people behaving this way.

If someone told you — with any level of seriousness — that the reason the stock market went down today was because they hadn’t checked the prices in the morning, you’d think they were crazy.

If someone told me they were going to wear a filthy, unwashed jersey to work so that their kid would do well on a math test, I’d take one step to the side and keep walking, muttering under my breath.

We don’t accept this craziness anywhere but in the world of sports. If someone tells you not to jinx the Twins by saying they’re going to win the next two games; OK, sorry, you’re right, heh heh, knock on wood.

But if someone told you not to predict the outcome of the next presidential election because you’ll jinx it; you’d tell them to jinx off.

Maybe it’s a good thing, though. Maybe this sports-generated craziness that infects us is therapeutic. In a world where daily events are so complex that it seems impossible for us, as individuals, to affect the outcomes, sports superstitions are a way to regain control.

Or at least feel that we have.

And superstition is a way to live vicariously through the athletes. The only way to be a part of the game, without actually playing it, is to believe, on some level, that your actions make a difference.

Even if, like me, you know that they don’t.

But living vicariously means dying vicariously, too. The fans who were hit hardest by Sunday’s pathetic loss were the ones who, like me, thought they could have made the difference.

If I had only watched that first inning… .

Oh well, there’s always the Wild. I’ve got my dirty boxers ready.