up against the tie," he said afterwards. "You
see, Mac put all those youngsters into it, and I didn't get any support."

Analyzing is a distasteful pastime to me, but let's see what it was that
made Ames win. Was it the necktie? Perhaps not. But some sliver of
confidence, which resulted from that first game when he was dressed up in
the scarf and the four-leaf clover, got stuck in his mind. And after that
the rest was easy.

Frank Chance, the manager of the Cubs, has a funny superstition which is
of the personal sort. Most ball-players have a natural prejudice against
the number "13" in any form, but particularly when attached to a Pullman
berth. But Chance always insists, whenever possible, that he have "lower
13." He says that if he can just crawl in under that number he is sure of
a good night's rest, a safe journey, and a victory the next day. He has
been in two or three minor railroad accidents, and he declares that all
these occurred when he was sleeping on some other shelf besides "lower
13." He can usually satisfy his hobby, too, for most travellers steer
clear of the berth.

McGraw believes a stateroom brings him good luck, or at least he always
insists on having one when he can get it.

"Chance can have 'lower 13,'" says "Mac," "but give me a stateroom for
luck."

Most ball-players nowadays treat the superstitions of the game as jokes,
probably because they are a little ashamed to acknowledge their
weaknesses, but away down underneath they observe the proprieties of the
ritual. Why, even I won't warm up with the third baseman while I am
waiting for the catcher to get on his mask and the rest of his
paraphernalia. Once, when I first broke in with the Giants, I warmed up
with the third baseman between innings and in the next round they hit me
hard and knocked me out of the box. Since then I have had an uncommon
prejudice against the practice, and I hate to hear a man even mention it.
Devlin knows of my weakness and never suggests it when he is playing the
bag, but occasionally a new performer will drill into the box score at
third base and yell:

"Come on, Matty! Warm up here while you're waiting."

It gets me. I'll pitch to the first baseman or a substitute catcher to
keep warm, but I would rather freeze to death than heat up with the third
baseman. That is one of my pet jinxes.

And speaking of Arthur Devlin, he has a few hand-raised jinxes of his own,
too. For instance, he never likes to hear a playe