The only time I would take it off is when we lost a game. There was a time though where we had set the record for winning consecutive games and nobody would sit next to me on the bench. They tried to hide it and throw the hat away but that was just one of the things. And you could never step on the white line going to your position. Way back when I first joined the Yankees, Joe Gordon cut up pieces of paper and as he ran into the dugout from second base, he dropped the paper on the mound and Bobo Newsom would not pitch until they got every scrap of paper off the ground.
Ballplayers are very superstitious.
It seems silly but some guys were worse than me. They would wear a sweatshirt for a long time and that's bad if you're in a winning streak. And then as the game went on, well, they didn' t have two, three and four uniforms like they have today. I mean it would really slow you down. You would also get only six bats for the whole year.