Black Cats, Broken Mirrors and Your Fiancé

What do these all have in common one might wonder. Survey says... they are all bad luck if you happen to be Nik Turley. Despite his protestations, I am pretty well convinced that I am his bad luck charm. But let’s start at the beginning.

I have never been superstitious. In fact, when I was seven a black cat crossed my path on Halloween. I looked at it curiously and thought this could be a good omen. I mean how many black cats cross people’s paths on Halloween night?!? I considered myself lucky to be the recipient of such chance spookiness.

Fast forward 14 years and my how things have changed. Baseball players are notorious for being superstitious. Just ask Wikipedia. And it rubs off on you no matter how ridiculous it may seem. Nik is a perpetual wood knocker. As in he says something he “shouldn’t” and in order not to jinx it must frantically search for wood or an acceptable substitute to knock on. I have seen that boy knock on tables, an easel, a door, the floor and even the faux wood paneling of a car. As we dated, I learned what things I could and couldn’t talk about with regards to baseball. You have to walk a very fine line, my friend. So being exposed to all this superstition has 1.) made me think baseball players are strange and 2.) somehow made me superstitious. How does that happen?

And now I find myself in the position of believing that I am bad luck to my fiancé. Think I’m crazy? Well, let’s just look at the facts. Nik has pitched eight games. All of his games are available to listen to online. Guess who was listening to/watching his four worst games (in terms of ERA)? That’s right, yours truly. The other four games when he did his best, I was unfortunately (or actually fortunately for Nik) otherwise occupied and could not listen or else only caught the end of the action thereby allowing him to succeed.

What is a girl to do? I’m torn. He’s pitching again Friday so I have two days to think about how to proceed. Nik insisted that I’m not bad luck yet gently suggested I should just watch the computer update the stats instead of actually listening to the game. Very encouraging. Well, this has officially gotten out of hand because I was going to deliver an ultimatum to end this post but I can’t because I’m too scared it would jinx him.


This is the Angels rally monkey also known as a superstition albeit an adorable one.