Later Rincewind and Twoflower couldn't quite agree on any single fact about her, except that she had appeared to be beautiful (precisely what physical features made her beautiful they could not, definitively, state) and that she had green eyes. Not the pale green of ordinary eyes, either - these were the green of fresh emeralds and as iridescent as a dragonfly. And one of the few genuinely magical facts that Rincewind knew was that no god or goddess, contrary and volatile as they might be in all other respects, could change the colour or nature of their eyes...
'L-' he began. She raised a hand.
'You know that if you say my name I must depart,' she hissed. 'Surely you recall that I am the one goddess who comes only when not invoked?'
- from The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett

I'll start out right from the front and say, very simply, yes, I'm superstitious. In many ways I'm very superstitious. I lit candles before some of the ACLS games. I've told the friend who led a baseball party in a prayer from Psalms before game three of the pennant series that he needs to keep looking through Psalms for next year's season. Or maybe other things, it might have been him reading that did it, and not the book in question. I don't know.

Rituals are real, rituals have power. If someone stopped us from being able to do the little things that make us feel comfortable, we wouldn't do all we can do. This is another way superstition makes sense - if someone upsets a pre-game routine, it's entirely possible the player's game may be off, because that routine helped to serve as a focus, almost like a traditional mantra.

Any tool used to focus is just that. A tool. Whether we call them superstitions or not, there are a lot of people in Boston who light those candles.

But despite my weight of superstition, I don't believe in the Curse. At least, not in the way it's portrayed. Babe Ruth certainly was not the sort of player who would lay a curse upon the game he loved - for if the Curse exists, it certainly is a blight on the game of baseball, keeping the best teams from achieving what they should manage to achieve. No abstract lesser deities (or even greater deities) of baseball would blight that which is their demesne, either; after all, a harm to that which the gods look over is a harm, however indirectly, to the power of the gods.

There is no Curse. There is a long string of things which... wouldn't have happened in an ideal ballgame, yes. Perhaps there is an explanation for them. Perhaps there is not. But continuing to worry over the mythological Curse is only going to give it some great epic significance, tilting chance a little more negative in those moments we are expecting to have our hearts broken, as fans. I don't believe in the Curse - I do believe in the power of belief and expectation to change reality. (Hence, superstitious.)

The mythical Curse is not the vengeful Bambino looking over our shoulders and nudging those hopping balls once way or another, to miss a bat or miss a glove. It is not the vengeful spirits governing baseball's continuing hatred of No, No, Nanette. The Curse is truly that we, the fans, the people whose prayers and wishes and dreams have the greatest effect on the factor of chance, positive or negative, secretly expect to be let down. We all know that the Sox hold out hope to us, and then we lose it. It's a joke I've made, though my New Years' Resolution for this year (two months early) is not to speak that joke again, nor to think of it if I can help it. We expect it - despite all hope and prayer, deep down we know that someone, at a critical moment, is going to literally drop the ball.

And when it happens - there's the Curse again.

This season, we said we believe. Let's truly believe, now, because our boys of summer deserve better of us than to 'know' they won't pull through in the crunch. We've seen them come from behind more times than we can count. We've seen them hold a lead. We've seen them knock the sox off the opposition. We've seen close games, we've seen wide gaps. But we haven't seen a team that was beaten - or as it was eloquently put after the fifth game of the pennant - "We didn't lose. We just didn't play good enough to win."

And we need to stop wishing them luck! I will never, ever, if I ever get a chance to speak to one of the players - and I'm hoping to infest Fenway constantly next season to make up for the years I've lived up here that I didn't go to games - I will never wish him luck. Asking that green-eyed lady to put in an appearance makes certain that she doesn't. (Hence, the quote above.)

I'm not gonna say what I will wish them, either. It's my well-wishing, and I don't want it diluted by everyone using it. That's my superstition, and I'm not going to talk about it. It's bad luck.