Baseball Is Weird - and Here’s Why We Love It

Hey babes!

No recap this week - still working in Europe and managing time zones. But I think this episode will be a fun one! ~

Baseball is a sport built on rituals, superstitions, strange traditions, and stories that sound completely made up.

In this episode, we’re diving into some of baseball’s weirdest quirks, from lucky bats and no-hitter superstitions to racing sausages, rally cats, live bear mascots, and the unwritten rules that somehow everyone follows (except for the Yankees, because obviously).

But underneath all the weirdness is something deeper: the reason baseball becomes so meaningful to the people who love it.

Whether you’re brand new to the game or you’ve been watching for years, this episode is a reminder that baseball isn’t just a sport. It’s a collection of stories, traditions, and tiny moments that connect generations of fans.

• Baseball superstitions
• Unwritten rules
• Stadium traditions
• Weird baseball history
• Why baseball feels so human

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Transcript

0:00

Hey babe. Welcome to Baseball for Girls, where baseball meets soft girl energy. I'm Daughter, and here we do baseball with heart, humanity, and a little humor. So whether you're brand new to the game or deep in your baseball era, you're in the right place. So grab something cozy and settle in. And let's get into today's episode. Let's play ball. Hey babe! Welcome back to another episode of Baseball for Girls. Today I wanted to do a little episode about why baseball is a really weird sport and why that makes it so special and so fun to watch. I feel like a lot of people that don't really watch baseball don't realize how many weird little traditions and different things that go on within baseball. But honestly, this weirdness is what really creates the attachment that people have for baseball and like why people love it so much. So today I'll be covering some traditions that are kind of weird, weird superstitions and some weird historical things that have happened in baseball. If baseball is nothing else, it's a huge historical capsule of all these random things that have happened. And baseball thrives on remembering all the weird little things that have happened in the past. And honestly, baseball's weirdness is what really makes it feel so human. Okay, so the more you watch baseball, the more you're gonna realize that it really isn't just a sport, it really is a collection of different rituals and superstitions, um, different habits and unwritten rules and just tiny little traditions that have survived over a hundred years, and everyone just kind of accepts them. And really, I think that's why people love it so much. So, first, I'm gonna talk about how baseball players are deeply superstitious. So they are probably the most superstitious people alive, like literally, and I think it's really because baseball is such a game of failure, like I've mentioned several times, and it really just feels random. Um, so when players find something that they think is working for them, they want to keep repeating it. Like to me, it seems like you want to align yourself with a winning timeline where when you won this game, you were doing all of these specific things, and so you just want to keep repeating those things over and over again to stay within that winning timeline. Because even the best hitters are gonna be failing most of the time, so they're all trying to find ways to keep winning and keep improving. So, some of my favorite baseball superstitions include like when players eat the exact same meal before every single game. There are players that won't wash like their jersey or like their underwear when they're doing really well, or they won't shave during like a winning streak. One that's really interesting is that sometimes players will use the exact same bat until it breaks just because it's like becomes a lucky bat that maybe they hit a home run with or something. A good one that most players pretty much follow is not stepping on the foul line, like always making sure to step over it. So the foul line, if we remember, is just the white lines that are on the outside of the baseball diamond. So instead of just stepping on it, you kind of respectfully step over it. And interestingly, um, baseball players also try to like eat the exact same flavor of sunflower seeds or just like eating the exact same snack for every single game. Sometimes they'll always sit in the exact same spot for games as well. But I think that the biggest one is that during a no-hitter, no one will talk about it while it's happening. So a no-hitter is basically just when there are no hits recorded. So the pitcher is doing really well, all the batters are getting struck out, no one has been able to get a base hit or double or triple or home run, none of that. There's been no hits recorded, which is super super rare. Even the best pitchers won't have a no-hitter, probably in their career. But a lot of elite pitchers have no hitters. So, whenever a no-hitter is happening, even the announcers will kind of dance around the subject when the pitcher goes back to the dugout in between innings, no one will sit next to him, no one will talk to him, no one will acknowledge him. It's like the hit, like the pitcher doesn't even exist because they just feel like as soon as you acknowledge the no-hitter is happening, it can kind of ruin it. And honestly, there has been times where someone may have mentioned it or spoken to the pitcher or something, and then then the next inning they get a hit or whatever, and the no-hitter is broken, and so that really makes people like just believe in it even more. I feel like that is probably the biggest superstition across all teams, and one that you'll definitely hear about, especially if you're at a game that has a no-hitter going on. And then there are the unwritten rules that are kind of insane in baseball. So these are just rules that are rules that are just like technically not rules, but everyone kind of acts like they're they are. Like a no-hitter is when the pitcher is doing really well and there's no hits recorded. But a bunt, if we remember, is basically when a batter goes up to the plate, and instead of trying to actually swing at the ball, he kind of holds it up closer to his face in a way, um, and like in a way that's parallel to the ground, and so that way when the ball is coming towards him, he kind of just like taps it, and it will always just like ball to the ground. It's kind of an art, kind of a lost art. Not a lot of people still do bunting, not a lot of teens still practice bunting. Um, but if you can hit if you can do a good bunt, it will kind of go right into like a little bit of a no man's land where it hits right in the middle of the diamond, like between the pitcher and like the third baseman, in a way that makes it too hard for either position to get to the ball in time, and that would allow for the batter to then get to first base, and then that would call that would be considered a an infield base hit. That would pick make people extremely upset because they if they were in a no-hitter and someone kind of just like took kind of an easier way out to make sure that they got a hit, it's not really it's kind of frowned upon. And then um, another unwritten rule that I think is really interesting is that position players will never step on the pitcher's mound. So any position player, whenever they're walking around the field, they will intentionally avoid walking across the pitcher's mound just as a sign of respect for the pitcher. Another kind of smaller one is that whenever you hit a home run is to just not be too celebratory. You can obviously be happy, but like trying to be respectful, especially if you hit a home run against your former team. There is an expectation of respect. You can be happy, but just trying to like tone it down a little bit. Another unwritten rule is that if you hit someone, so if a pitcher accidentally hits the batter when he's throwing the pitch, you don't immediately kind of celebrate once you get the next batter out. And also to just try not to make it seem like you hit the batter on purpose, obviously. So just trying to be respectful to the other team once you have accidentally hit someone with a pitch. And honestly, a lot of the times when the benches are cleared is what they say, like whenever everyone gets really angry and they all rush onto the field, it's usually because a pitcher has accidentally or not so accidentally hit a batter with a pitch, and the batter might have thought that it was on purpose, or someone in the dugout may have thought it was on purpose, and so then everyone gets pretty upset about that, and then obviously everyone kind of runs onto the field and it becomes a bigger situation. And another unwritten rule is that if a catcher is visiting the mound, it's respectful to not eavesdrop. I know that a lot of teams don't actually follow this unwritten rule, it's because it's not actually a rule, and along with like someone seeing the signs that a catcher might be communicating with the pitcher, and then the other team sees those signs and like is talking to their team about the signs. You know, the Yankees are really, really known for doing that, especially if they have a batter that gets to second base, so they have a runner on second, they are known for watching the catcher, watching the pitcher, and trying to see what the next pitch is going to be, and then communicating that to the batter that is at the plate. So that is kind of a very clearly unwritten rule that not every team really respects. And I really love some kind of weird baseball traditions. So every stadium has its own little thing that it does between innings. So if you haven't gone to a baseball game before in person, then you might not know. But in between each inning, when you know, if you're watching it on TV, it'll go to commercial. But if you're in person, typically in between innings, the baseball stadium will play little games, there'll be something on the Megatron, or just something is gonna be going on, and so every stadium has their own different thing that they like to do. So here are a couple fun ones that I really like. So the Milwaukee Brewers they have the sausage race. Um, so they have these giant racing sausages that run around the field, they are not mascots, they're just sausages, and they are racing each other. And very similarly, the Orioles do the same thing, but it's with hot dogs. And so we'll have a hot dog race in between, I believe it's like the sixth and the seventh inning or something like that. And basically, everybody is trying to see who's gonna win, so it's like ketchup versus mustard versus relish. I'm always team relish, by the way. And then at the end of the year, they're like, Oh, which condiment won the most races or whatever. At first, it used to be just like on the Megatron, like it was just like a thing we would watch, but then eventually they actually have real people in costumes and hot dog and hot dog costumes that are racing. It's it's pretty fun. The Mets at City Field they do a home run apple, so an a giant apple will rise from the ground whenever one of the Mets players hits a home run, and that's probably kind of a weird thing to happen if you're at your first baseball game and someone hits a home run and everyone's yelling and screaming, and it's so fun, and then all of a sudden a gigantic apple just rises from the ground. It's probably kind of weird, probably kind of weird to see for the first time, but that's one of their little traditions. One of my favorites is that at Finway Park, which is the Boston Red Sox, they sing Sweet Caroline in between one of their innings, and so I love that song, and such a fun little song that everybody loves to sing. So it's just a fun little song that people sing right in between innings. If you haven't heard the song Sweet Caroline before, definitely recommend listening to it, and you'll get why everyone loves to sing it together. And the last one that I wanted to mention is Wrigley Field, and that is where the Chicago Cubs play. So whenever the Chicago Cubs will win a game, they have like this weird little song that they'll sing right at the end. Honestly, I should know it by now as many times as the Cubs have won in the past couple of weeks, but it's basically just like, oh hey, like Chicago's won today kind of thing. It's really cute. But when they were winning like 10 games in a row, I was like, Alright, guys, that's enough. And they have like this flag that's just like a blue W on a white flag that they'll fly whenever they win. So that's like their cute little tradition that they do at the end of a winning game. And finally, I wanted to talk about some of the historical weirdness that goes on in baseball. So I just looked up a couple of like weird uh historical things or historical events, and these are just a couple of my favorites. So apparently, the Chicago Cubs, speaking of them, they used to have a live bear as their mascot. So in the early 1900s, the Cubs briefly kept a bear in their ballpark because someone thought it would be the best way to represent that the Cubs uh were the Cubs. They had a bear, and I just thought that was really funny. They no longer do that anymore, though. Another one is that the spit ball was once legal. So a spit ball was when pitchers would use saliva or dirt, chewing tobacco, or just any other substance to make the ball move unpredictably, and this was eventually banned because then hitters were not really able to see the ball clearly, and obviously just gave too much of an advantage for the pitchers. There was also, this isn't like one specific event because this happens kind of often, but games get delayed a lot because of bees or just like any just like nature thing happening on the field. So there's been multiple MLB games over the years where massive swarms of bees will just get onto the field and then it makes the game have to pause and they have to wait for the beekeepers to come. I remember there was one game about two years ago now where at the Diamondbacks stadium where there was just a gigantic beehive just right there in the fence, and I think maybe a ball hit it, or maybe it wasn't even a ball hit it, but the bees just all just swarmed out all of a sudden, and they had to stop the game. And then I think it was like a two-hour delay because they had to wait for the beekeepers to come and remove the bees. And then speaking of just like random nature, in 2017, a stray cat ran onto the field during a St. Louis Cardinals game, and the cat obviously was removed, but then afterwards the Cardinals ended up coming back to winning the game, and so then fans immediately decided that the cat had some sort of magical powers. Like I said, superstitions are very prevalent in baseball, and so people kept believing that the rally cat was essential for the Cardinals to win that game. And the last thing, it's not really one specific event, but fans used to keep score at every single game. I like to keep score at games sometimes, especially if I go by myself. Back then, obviously, you would just bring your a paper scorecard and you would record your all the pitches and hits, and it really was just a part of like a hobby and like record keeping and a way to like really pay attention more deeply to the game. Now there's like smartphone apps and other things that you can use to keep track of the game, or you know, just watch game day, which is a feature on MLB app where you know you're literally just watching every single part of the game and like as kind of a live score keeper because it tells you exactly what's happening. But before it used to be a very routine thing that fans would do. I like to try to keep score because it's really fun, and it really like allows you to understand the game better, it allows you to follow pitch sequencing better. Um, that's how I've learned more about pitch sequencing and the importance of it, is honestly just from keeping score. I've been wanting to create my own custom scorecard because I feel like I have used a lot of different kinds of scorecards now, and I have like my favorite things that I like to keep score and keep track of when I'm watching a game, and different scorecards have different things on it to allow you to track different aspects of the game. So I'd love to like create something where all of my favorite things are just in one place. It's definitely tricky to try to explain how to score a game just through audio, like through a podcast, but it's honestly very simple. Once you like get a score book, they always have instructions on the inside, and so it's really um easy to learn how to do it. So the weirdness in baseball is actually a really important part of it. I mean, I feel like that's what makes baseball feel so alive, it really leaves room for rituals and routines, mythology, and just like strong emotional attachment. I mean, there are a hundred and sixty-two games, and that is so many. So over time, people naturally start creating mean creating meaning out of small tiny things like a lucky hat or like a walk-up song or snacks, superstitions, like all of these things. And then as fans, we are watching games throughout our life, and so sometimes like a random Tuesday night game that you're watching while at least for me, like watching a game after a hard day at work, or just going through something in your life and being able to just sit back and watch baseball, and then you just become more emotionally attached to the game through that way as well, because it's just something that becomes a constant in your life if you choose to let it be, and it becomes such a rhythm, and that's what really makes baseball stop feeling like just a sport and really like a companion in your life, and that's why baseball is so sentimental, it's like the most romantic sport, and you couldn't convince me otherwise if you tried. So, yeah. Baseball is weird, baseball is really weird, but that's really what makes it so beautiful because underneath all of those rituals and chaos and weird little traditions is just like a bunch of people just trying to believe in something crater together and having fun for a few hours, and there's something that's really comforting about that. So that's all that I have for you today. I will get back on my weekly recaps soon. Work has just been dragging your girl through the gutter, honey. So I have not really had a lot of time to watch baseball in a way to make the weekly recap. I've really just been watching for my sanity um and not really keeping up with it in that way, unfortunately. But things should slow down soon. I'm still currently in Europe till the end of June. So hopefully this week I should be able to watch more baseball and get caught back up and have a weekly recap for you guys next week. So thanks for sticking around and thank you for hanging out with me in the softest corner of sports media. I hope you have a good rest of your week, and I'll see you guys later. Bye.