The Waterbury Democrat., 1934-03-13
By CARL HUBBELL

(NeW York Giants Pitcher) Copyright, 1884, NEA Service Incl
 When it comes to baseball, I freely admit that I'm superstitious
 It sounds foolish to confess that, but so far as I know there isn't a major league ball player who isn't. in some measure, the same way. The little precautions I take to keep Lady Luck on the mound with me aren't greatly different from those used by scores of other pitchers.
 If I start game and am going good, I always too my glove to a certain spot near the third base fine, with it's face up, and face up it stays as long as they're not get ting hits. When they hit, I turn it over or move it a few feet.
 At the start of a game I always take a certain place on the players bench and I sit there until some thing goes wrong. If things are bad I move just a foot or two.
 If they're hitting me pretty free- ly and we're really in a jam, try the other end of the bench.
 Sometimes I spend my time off the mound sliding up and down the bench, trying to find that lucky spot.
 When I pitch winning game, I hang the sweatshirt I wore in my locker and use it only for games as long as I'm winning. When l drop one, that sweatshirt is out. Its luck has gone.
 Of course while I'm pitching a game, none of my teammates would think of talking to me while we're off the field. Neither would they say anything on the field that might call my attention to the fact that I'm going along nicely.
 The worst possible blunder a rookie could pull would be to praise a pitcher in mid-game Mancuso,> the catcher, and the um- with whom I exchange words dur ing the course of a game.
 No one, naturally, would speak game. That would be just asking for a blowup.
  more or less like mine. Some of them carry them over from season to season, but l never do. change mine every year. Sometimes I have several sets in one month, all de- pending on how we're doing. But l know one ball player who has the first superstition he ever exercised in addition to all he has accumu- lated since.
 I mean Hughie Critz. He's the most superstitious ball player in the National League-and that's saying plenty.
 Hughie's specialist on picking up things around the diamond. He literally SCOUTS the territory around second base. He picks up bits of paper, burnt matches, shreds of grass, clods and pebbles by the gross. All of them he puts into his left hip pocket.
 Then he has the players bench to worry about, too. That must be kept entirely clean. If a teammate lays a glove on it, Hughie pounces on it like a terrier. It means er- TOTS to him, I guess.
 He picks up chewing tobacco and gum wrappings, cigar stubs, or anything else that falls around our bench. Each day, it is the caretak- CTS job to empty Hughie's hip pocket.
 It wouldn't hold much more than one days collection.
 A lot of players declare they are free of foolish nOtions," but just you watch them. Sooner or later you'll catch them doing some crazy little trick and doing it the same way each time.
 Baseball makes a person that way. The little things make the breaks that win or lose ball games and if players mind Is at rest for having adhered to a certain formula, l guess it's not so foolish after all.
 Some people say it's the "psy- chological effect that's important. Baseball players don't call it that, but I suppose that's what they're striving for.
 NEXT: The Dangerous Hitters.