After doing some research, I have come up with what I feel is a list of the five most superstitious athletes of all-time.  I am sure there are many more, and I welcome you to add them to this list by commenting.  The five athletes I have chosen particularly fascinated me through the years by being repetitive to a fault.

1. Turk Wendell  – Perhaps the dictionary definition of a superstitious athlete.  Wendell, as seen above, would never step on a baseline going to or coming from the mound.  He wouldn’t just step over the line, as many do, he hopped like a fourth grader propelling himself to maximum heights.  Maybe his vertical distance meant he was far from the baseline as well.  This wasn’t it.  After he set records for hopping baselines, he would head to the dugout to brush his teeth EVERY INNING.  I looked at almost two hundred websites, but none that mention the dental hygiene obsession mention whether or not Wendell did this on days he didn’t pitch.
2. Wade Boggs – Boggs would eat chicken every day before a game.  I’m not sure if he retreated and ate steak on off days, and perhaps the “other white meat” all Winter, but on a summer day when the Red Sox were playing, Boggs was doing the poultry ritual.  Boggs also wrote the word “Chai” in the dirt before every at-bat.  Chai is a Hebrew word meaning “living”.
3. Peyton Manning – Manning has a ritual that is less perplexing.  Before every game, both home and away, Manning has to read a program from cover-to-cover.
4. Brian Urlacher – Urlacher eats exactly two chocolate chip cookies before every game.  Not one or three cookies depending on hunger levels, but exactly two cookies.  Must have gotten bamboozled by The Count and Cookie Monster as a kid, but only as a tandem.
5. Michael Jordan – Wore his North Carolina shorts under his Bulls uniform shorts every game.

Bonus: Curtis Martin – Dating back to his days at Pittsburgh and through his entire NFL career, Martin always read Psalm 91.

I know we, as humans, develop rituals which can sometimes defy logic.  However, the above listed athletes have not tried to function without the routines they adapted as “their own”.  Publicity stunt or obsessive-compulsive?  In all of the above listed instances, I would call it obsessive-compulsive behavior.

Linus Van Pelt always had his blanket and got lightheaded and dizzy when seperated from it.  The above listed blankets fascinate me.

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