A new book looks at how rituals, charms and curses are central to the identity of America\u2019s pastime<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a Chicago legend, nurtured like a hot dog with everything except ketchup. During the 1945 World Series, local bar owner William Sianis brought his pet goat, Murphy, to a game between the hometown Cubs and the Detroit Tigers. Murphy was denied entry, because he smelled. Thus began the Curse of the Billy Goat<\/a>, dooming Chicago\u2019s NL entry to decades of also-ran status. As Sianis reportedly wrote team owner Philip Knight Wrigley after the Tigers won in 1945, \u201cWho smells now?\u201d The Cubs would not win another title until 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n Welcome to the world of magic in baseball. On the macro level, a goat can apparently change the fortunes of an entire team; on the micro level, batters engage in elaborate rituals at the plate, and no one dares to say \u201cno-hitter\u201d until the final out. It\u2019s a narrative that goes back to baseball\u2019s 19th-century origins, and it\u2019s all chronicled in a new book out this week \u2013 The Magical Game: The Spirit and History of Baseball\u2019s Superstitions, Rituals, and Curses by author, journalist, astrologer and New York Mets fan Addy Baird.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new book looks at how rituals, charms and curses are central to the identity of America\u2019s pastime It\u2019s a Chicago legend, nurtured like a hot dog with everything except ketchup. During the 1945 World Series, local bar owner William Sianis brought his pet goat, Murphy, to a game between the hometown Cubs and the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}