Books: "The Magical Game" By Addy Baird

 

The Magical Game: The Spirit and History of Baseball's Superstitions, Rituals, and Curses

By Addy Baird

St. Martin's Press; hardcover, 304 pages; $29.00

Addy Baird is a writer, reporter, and baseball fan, whose favorite team is the Mets. She has a background in investigative journalism, and has written and worked for The New Republic, Politico, and The Daily Beast.

In the provocative new book The Magical Game: The Spirit and History of Baseball's Superstitions, Rituals, and Curses, Baird examines the intricacies of the game that give it a character all its own. Baseball is a game that involves far more than balls and strikes, hits and runs, and three strikes in an inning, and still goes beyond its increasing focus on numbers, or analytics.

Baird stands out because she is providing the voice of a fan that does not get represented much in baseball literature, as she is young, female, and someone whose career pursuits centered on covering politics. She takes that investigative spirit to this endeavor, as she examines many of the game's "curses," such as the Boston Red Sox's Curse of the Bambino, which they broke in 2004 with the first of four World Championships in this century, and the Chicago Cubs breaking The Curse of the Billy Goat in 2016, ending a 108-year drought.

While those are examples of widely-known superstitions, Baird also finds plenty of fascinating and forgotten baseball moments, as she seems to find commonality in the habitual behavior of baseball players, whether they're a legend or an average player. A player's habits could be the first thing a fan thinks of when they come to mind, such as late 1990s Mets relief pitcher Turk Wendell throwing the rosin bag on the mound before he would pitch.

It's fitting that Baird is a Mets fan because that is a team that always seem to have something going on to will the baseball spirits, especially their 2024 playoff run. That year, the players jumped on the bandwagon of Jose Iglesias' song "OMG," frequently holding a sign with the phrase, and the fans latched on to the idea that the McDonald's character Grimace brought he team good luck when he threw out the first pitch on the night they began a winning streak. The star of that team, Pete Alonso, even had a lucky pumpkin he got in Milwaukee during a playoff series, one he incidentally won with a ninth-inning home run.

Baird is a converted baseball fan who hopes that this book will appeal to more than just existing fans of the game. She finds a similarity in what players do during games to the magic in our daily lives, as superstitions are like tarot readings and rituals to morning routines. Where former Red Sox star Nomar Garciaparra would constantly adjust his batting gloves before taking an at-bat, someone in their daily life could have a routine getting in their car on the way to the office.

Overall, Baird sees baseball as a game that is the history of the country and provides people a connection to one another, especially when we give ourselves over to its magic. It could be something greater than the sport itself.

A Conversation With Addy Baird (provided by St. Martin's):

What inspired you to write The Magical Game? When I was living in New York, I had what I always fascinated by the sport's magical culture. When I left school and was working as a stressed and busy political reporter in Washington, D.C., baseball became a respite, and I was inspired to explore my passion for the sport's magic in the book.

So what is the story of the book? The Magical Game is the story of, and relationship with, magic, exploring the sport's superstitions, curses, rituals, and jinxes. The book looks at the rise of sabermetrics in the sport and the staying power of magic despite the way advanced statistics have changed the game in recent decades, as well as exploring some of the most magical moments in the history of the sport, and my belief that baseball's inherent magic is the way it exists in timeless dimensions that allows both players and fans to be fully present in a way few other things in modern society allow.

What kind of experience has writing The Magical Game been for you? Writing this book has been the weirdest, best, most blessed, most stressful, most wonderful, most exciting, most FUN thing I've ever done in my life. I've been writing professionally for more than a decade now primarily as a political journalist, so writing about baseball, especially in the long format of a book, has forced me to push myself as a writer and reporter. The book has been an amazing vessel for my own self-exploration, a constant therapy topic, and the thing I am most proud of in my entire life thus far.

What about your process as a writer - the way you write, writing tools, location - makes you unique as both a writer and someone going from a political reporter background to writing specifically about baseball? One thing I loved about writing this book is that it gave me a chance to read a lot about writing. Several books helped me throughout the process, including Draft No. 4 by John McPhee, Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami, and How to Write a Novel in Three Drafts by Matt Bell. One of the things that really unlocked my process for me was creating a routine similar to Murakami's with a strict daily word count of 1,000 words a day (although Murakami writes about 1,600 words a day, but I needed research and reporting time!) and considered my exercise routine as part of my creative process. This book was built on reformer Pilates and incline walks! When I'm feeling stuck I switch to writing by hand or to taking a walk and dictating while I voice record to try and break myself out of any blocks. I read a lot, both books related to the topic I'm writing about and unrelated, as I think being immersed in literature keeps the gears greased.

What interesting experiences occurred for you during the writing process for this book? I had some remarkable experiences writing this, including interviewing a former MLB player who threw a no-hitter in the 1970s. We had a fascinating conversation not just about baseball but about religion that was really moving to me. I also interviewed a psychologist for the book early on the day of a Mets playoff game, and didn't realize until I called her that she was also a Mets fan, and we got to celebrate and agonize together before I took the train up to the city to go to the game (which the Mets lost in terrible fashion).

I think my favorite experience during the process of reporting this book was the chance I got to attend a Mets game from the broadcast truck and see the live production of the game. There is a fair bit of the final chapter dedicated to this experience, as I found it to be one of the most magical days of my life. I also had the chance to visit Cooperstown and the Hall of Fame while reporting this book, and edited it during the Mets 2024 playoff run.