There are two infallible truths in baseball: superstition and tradition…
They’re both unavoidable, even if the first isn’t always as widely visible. What I mean is that we didn’t see Wade Boggs scarf down chicken before each and every game. (Though I suppose we could have seen him take precisely 150 grounders—no more, no less—and start batting practice at exactly 5:17 each day.) We’re not with Matt Garza as he makes a Popeye’s run, we don’t actually watch Justin Verlander shovel fistfuls of Taco Bell into his maw, and thank the good lord above, we wouldn’t know that Jason Giambi is rocking a gold, slump-busting thong if he didn’t tell us.
The latter truth—owing to the fact that it’s often in the “audience participation” realm—is much more apparent.
Starting in the early 1990’s, the Milwaukee Brewers instituted a “sausage race” during every home game, a buffoonish lark featuring people running around the perimeter of the field dressed as a bratwurst, a Polish sausage and an Italian sausage. (They’ve since added a hot dog and a chorizo.) This makes sense because, well, Milwaukee.
