The Waterbury Democrat., 1937-08-13
FIGURES woo LADY LUCK
 SHOE JOE LINK
SuperstitiOus Players Like Women Who Believe
 Fortune TeIlers
BY RICHARD MCCAIN NEA Service Sports Writer

Strong men shudder and weep to- day.
 Iris Friday the 13th---a day of horrors for the strong young men and old of the athletic world.
 Athletes, you know, are the most superstitious of all citizens. They got more hopped up over hexes and hoodoos than sailors or old ladies who believe in fortune tell- CTS.
 Fearlessly, fighters will march >in- to a barrage of knuckles, and base- ball players will face the smoking fire of speedball pitchers without flinchin, and gridiron warriors will hurl themselves recklessly under laundering cleats. None of them fear physical hurts.
 But when it comes to superstition, the boys have an unholy fesN. Frantically, they woo Lady Luck; frenziedly, they shoo Joe Jinx. Ball players, for instance, think they can break up batting slumps by messing up the bats in front of the dugout, fighters practically swoon at the thought of wearing new ring shoes, and the American Automobile Association takes official notice of Joe Jinx by refusing to allow a driver to race in a car numbered 13.
 Hairpins and Baby shoes
 The boys are liable to be super- stitious about most anything-food, clothes, the side of the street they walk on-anything.
 Walter Hagen likes red-haired caddies, Peter DePaolo carried a pair of his baby's shoes in the cockpit of his auto race, Gene Sarazen caresses the face of his butter, and Freddie Miller plays rummy in the dressing room before a fight.
 Carl Hubbell always lays his glove face up along the foul line when he's pitching, and Buck Newsom thinks that you've got to lay the glove face down to make bad luck scram.
 Bobby Grayson always rubbed a Negros head before each football game once footing @ $12 cab bill to get to the right fellow, a doorman at the Roosevelt hotel in Los Angeles. And Jock Suther- land knows that his Pittsburgh team will win if he reads a few lines from the classics on the morning of a big game.
 Buddy Myer thinks that four hairpins he picked up on the way to the ball park on the last day of the 1884 season enabled him to get those four hits which beat out Joe Vosmik for the American league batting championship.
 And Lou Gehrig, they say, thinks that a plate of pickled cells will help him squirm out of batting slump. However, under no cir- cumstances will Lulu Lou eat eels for breakfast. You know, of course, what Lulu eats for breakfast-even if he himself doesn't know
 The Rap and Not the Wrap
 Max Bear believed that his bright robe had something to dc with him knocking out poor Primo Carnera. It was the robe he wore in the mov- ing picture in which, as Steve Mor- gan, he whipped Primo. Of course, 1t goes without saying that 1t was the rap and not the wrap that beat the Alp.
 Members of the U. s. interna- tional rifle teams are sure of win- ming when the captain is carving on "whittling stick" which, when it isn't on duty, rests in velvet in the custody of the National Rifle Association in Washington It start- ed out as tent peg and is now down to the size of a pencil.
 It's an unwritten rule in baseball that you are never to mention the fact that pitcher is on his way to a no-hitter. Van Lingle Mungo goes this one better-he flies into @ rage If anyone utters the score or inning while he is working.
 Of course, being with the Dodg- CTS, Mungo doesn't fear many vio- lations of his law. Most of those Dodgers, you know, don't know what the score is.
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 The Daxxler's Shirt
 Ball players insist on wearing the same uniforms no matter how dirty they get-if they are in winning streak. Jim Bot tomley wears the same undershirt for weeks at time when he is banging the ball. And Heinie Manush once wore a pair of socks so long that they could stand up.
 There was nothing superstitious however, about Dazzy Vance wear. ing a tattered old sweatshirt back in 1928.
 Folks at first thouht Dazzy wal sentimental about it, but the bat. ters found that the tohrn right sleeve fluttered in the breeze just as Dazzy was about to let fly witt the ball and this was most dis. concerting. They made the unn. pires change Dazzy's shirt.
 The 1914 Boston Braves, baseballi Miracle Team, was the most super. stitious of all clubs. Manager George Stallings liked to go craz, remembering all the little talisman he was supposed to carry, all tn, ceremonials he had todo. and all tn, things he was to avoid saying.
 George especially feared sparows They say that 1t was John Nc Graw who scattered cornmeal al around the Braves dugout one da, to bring all the sparrows swoopinl down from Coogan's Bluff to feas before Stallings' eyes.
 Silly isn't 1t. being 50 supersti