No matter who you are, if you play baseball/softball at a professional, amateur, or below amateur level, there are always superstitions involved in the game. I have been playing sports all my life and even though I am getting older and pass my baseball prime, I can still play softball, but even in softball there are superstitions. For example, I do not like touching the line when I run on and off the field, but this season there has been more superstitions than normal. My buddy and I are the 3 and 4 hitters on the team, but for the first couple games we could not hit the ball for the life of us and we were making errors in the field, which is not normal for us at all. We quickly try to find out what has changed. Even my team has struggled, we usually play pretty decent ball, but my team as a whole has been struggling to find its groove. Which leads us scrabbling for reasons why we are doing terrible. Obviously the first thing we blame is our new uniforms, we purchased really nice uniforms this year, but so far we have not performed to the level of how good we look. There was even talk about switching back to our old uniforms to bring back some good luck. As for myself, I bought a brand new Wilson A2000 Glove and a new Worth Mutant 120 HD bat. I really wanted to play with my new very expensive glove, but after my first error I went right back to the old glove. Even with my new bat and working out with the 10 minute trainer and the P90x I still had a terrible start, I started the season 2 for 11, which is horrific in softball. It was not until one of my best friend's little sister came up and talked to me and distracted me from the on deck circle, that I started hitting well. I got right in the batter's box and hit a home run the first pitch. Since then she talks to me before every at bat and I have gone 13 for 15 since, and one of the times I was out she was late to the game, so she missed my first at bat.

It is funny to think that there are superstitions like this all around, which is ridiculous but it is part of the game. But it leads me to think what are some of the craziest superstitions and curses in baseball.

Over the past few years there has been some pretty big superstitions that have fallen, first there was the "Curse of the Bambino."  The curse started when the Boston Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees, before that Boston was the best team in baseball, but the trade was the beginning of an 86-year World Series Championship drought.  In that 86-year drought the Yankees went on to win 26 World Series Championships!!  

Another crazy curse was with the Chicago White Sox.  In 1919 the Chicago Black Sox had an incredible team, the most notable player on the team was Shoeless Joe Jackson, but in the 1919 World Series they committed the biggest crime in baseball, they tossed the games for money.  It took the Chicago White Sox 86-years to reverse that curse, because in 2005 they finally won the World Series.  It is crazy to think that both teams had an 86-year drought.  

Now, the most prolific curse still on the table is the Angry Goat Curse for the Chicago Cubs.  In 1945, a man named Billy Sianis had two box seat tickets for the World Series against the Detroit Tigers.  He decided to bring his pet goat "Murphy" to the game.  The goat was said to have a sign attached to it that wrote, "We got Detroit's Goat!"  They were first allowed in the game, but after awhile the Owner ejected Billy and his goat out of Wrigley's Field.  Than man was so furious about the ejection that he placed a curse on the Chicago Cubs.  They have not been back to the World Series since, even when it looked promising, there has been odd mishaps, most notable the Steve Bartman mishap.  

Lately, there has been talk of an Alex Rodriguez curse, even though he was the best player (before the steroid findings) in baseball, no team he has ever been with has ever been to the World Series, it is said that the "Curse of the Bambino" was reversed because of Alex Rodriguez.  Think about it, the Yankees were up 3 games to 0 on the Red Sox, no team has ever come back from a 0 to 3 deficit.  But Boston won four games in a row and went on to win the World Series for the first time in 86-years. Crazy huh?

Some other funny superstitions, are baseball players jumping over the chalked line, chewing the same piece of gum through a whole game, wearing the same underwear, wearing one hat all season, and touching their batting gloves before getting into the batter's box after every pitch.  

So whether you love them or hate them, superstitions will always be part of sports.