Superstition ain't the way

sports fan : superstitious :: dog : licks self

It only takes one. One event so "traumatic" that it forever alters the way you think.

The sports fan in me wasn't superstitious until Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS. I was at home, lying down on my couch, for the first seven innings of the game. Then before the top of the eighth, I sat up. I don't blame myself (wait, that's not 100% true), and I don't think that I caused events a half-mile west along Addison to happen as they did. While Big Ten Wonk has mentioned the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, I think sports fans fall somewhere between Vulcan logic and fantasy. Between causality and coincidence lies superstition.

Superstition happens after just as much as it happens before. When Illinois coughed up a 17-6 lead in the blink of an eye, I thought to myself, "Should I have waited until the TV timeout to start eating my buffalo wings?" When Charles Tillman fell down on the second play from scrimmage, I tried to figure out what I should have done differently. Superstition means second-guessing as much as it means preparing.

I don't really think that I caused any of those things to happen. I understand the concept of the butterfly effect, but I believe that chaos outweighs anything I could do. [The random -- yes, apparently it is random, on a quantum level -- nature of interactions of atomic and subatomic particles means that nothing I would be likely to do could be "heard" above the "noise" of randomness by the time it reached the subject of my attention.] That's the scientific rationalization. But I do second-guess myself all the time. Yes, James probably should have made that jump-hook. But if I had been standing up at the time, would it have gone in?

I'm used to being in control of much of what goes on in my life. My brain constantly evaluates how I do in these matters. I try not to care about the things that I don't control, but with sports, I have decided to care. Caring leads to evaluation, which leads to second-guessing. I don't second-guess whether I should have been sitting in a different seat when Vanderjagt pushed that field goal attempt into immortality. But I do wonder whether Shaun Pruitt would have hit those free throws if I had only used my straw rather than drinking straight out of my water glass.