There's a chapter in Christy Mathewson's 1912 baseball memoir Pitching In a Pinch devoted to superstitions among athletes, one of which involved rubbing the head of a "colored" child if you wanted to have a good day at the ballpark (keep in mind, we're talking 1912 here). Superstitions aren't to be taken lightly, of course; for every time you ignore them, they seem to come back to bite you in the ass (then again, that could just be coincidence...yeah, keep telling yourself that).
A couple of football seasons back, I began a ritual that would end up forever associating the Bruce Springsteen song "O Mary Don't You Weep" with my Clemson Tigers. I believe it was the season when we ran off nine straight victories...only to lose the last couple of games and be humiliated in the bowl game we got to that year. But still...the song came into my life via a mix CD sent out by someone I knew (or "knew") through a mutual-interest website (a forum dedicated to discussing the American version of The Office). We would try to make mix CDs for the summer and send them out to whoever wanted a copy (my own participation in this ritual was curtailed two years ago when my computer died, taking with it countless iTunes mixes I'd made for the purpose of impressing my online friends with my sublime musical taste). And it seemed appropriate to cue up whenever the Tigers won their first contest of that season, as a means of celebration. And then they kept winning...
So of course, whenever my iPod was handy after watching the game, I'd cue up "O Mary" and blast it into my adrenaline-fueled brain. The song is Bruce's take on a Pete Seeger song (either one that Pete wrote or found, I'm not sure), and it's a perfect post-victory romp. I have mixed feelings about the Boss; I grew up in the Eighties and well remember his near-omnipresence on the radio during those times (which means that he was not cool, I guess, or that he was too big to be considered cool unless you were from New Jersey, and then it was pretty much expected of you to love him). Bruce Springsteen, far from being middle-of-the-road, did indeed rock in those years. But it's the overexposure factor, the "not knowing what you've got because he's every damn where" syndrome that often accompanies popular music acts no matter the era they're in. Bruce isn't to blame, he just kinda dominated the rock scene during the era. He became emblematic in spite of his best efforts (see Reagan's misappropriation of "Born In the USA" as a campaign anthem in 1984).
Of course, behind the story of "Bruce Springsteen Rock God!," there's the more complex facts that tear away at any attempt to classify him as too big for his own good. I still remember the shock I felt when I heard him come in during the epic "Street Hassle" on the album by the same name of Lou Reed. This was from 1978, when Bruce was still riding high on Born To Run. Here was this guy, biggest rock star in the world, doing an uncredited part on a Lou Reed song (he of "Walk On the Wild Side" fame). It fit, his spoken-word part in the middle of this ode to junkie love gone wrong.
So as I said, that was my anthem for every post-Clemson game that season, even the losses (I didn't watch the bowl game, my inner fan instinct told me not to and I obeyed). Flash forward to this past season, where we acquainted ourselves quite nicely (our only losses were to the eventual national champs and the chumps on further down in the state). I had just purchased a used copy of the Rolling Stones' masterpiece Exile On Main Street and so had it in the car after working a bit downtown before the opener against Georgia. As I pulled out of my parking spot, "Happy" cued up on the CD player and I let it rip. This is one of those anomalies in the Rolling Stones catalogue, a song not sung by Mick. It's handled by Keith Richards (yes) and it's one of the best songs on the album (which is saying a lot, because the album itself is damn near perfect). Long story short: the album never left my car during football season after that win, and I even tried to make sure to have it in my CD player on game day. Yeah, we lost twice...but we only lost twice.
This season, I won't be working at the same place I have been for the past four years. Instead, I'll be at Clemson itself, as a grad student, and I don't know if I'll be attending any games but I feel like I have more of a choice to do so than I did in the past (and truth be told, the last time we beat the Lamecocks I was in the stands, so perhaps I'm the missing ingredient to our in-state slide). I don't have a song or CD picked out specifically for game days just yet, because it doesn't work like that; it just has to happen. Superstitious? Yes, but does it work? I'd like to think so.
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