This is similar to the thread on the superstitions / rituals of sports fans here .
Has anyone else noticed that Peyton Manning seems to lick his fingers… a lot?
I know that the rationale is to provide a better grip for the ball though I think it might be of dubious effectiveness. I see Manning licking his fingers while heading toward the sidelines. This looks to me more like an OCD-like manifestation and I’ve observed the exact same finger-licking habit from Kurt Warner. And based on where that hand goes, this practice appears to me as decidedly on the yucky side.
What other behaviors have you noticed among athletes professional or amateur?
I can think of two more.
Watch Gilbert Arenas of the Wizards when he’s at the free throw line. His routine consists of passing the ball around his back exactly three times, bouncing the ball exactly three times, quick wipe of the hand on his shorts and then he shoots. A commentator pointed this out once and I have never seen Arenas deviate from his routine.
A commentator also pointed out tennis player **Maria Sharapova’s ** routine prior to serving the ball. She approaches the base line and performs a little hopping back and forth maneuver, then bounces the ball with her arm extended exactly three times, brushes hair away from the side of her face on both sides (even if there’s none there) and then service. It’s actually almost fascinating to watch.
Who else have you seen or do any of the Doper athletes have their own that they would care to share?
The Arkansas Razorback punter has a ritual he goes through just before the ball is snapped to him. Now in the stands there are thousands of fans going through the ritual along with him. I have know idea how to add a link to the reply. Maybe this link will work.
Several QB’s lift their leg slighty of the ground before each snap when in the shotgun.Tony Romo and Brett Favre to name a couple,I am sure others do it also.
Right before teeing up the ball, most American football kickers squeeze the ball on the ends so hard it looks like they are trying to pop it, or try to squish it on the ground.I can’t imagine that having any benefits.
Joe Morgan, of the Big Red Machine,twitched his elbow several times directly before each pitch.
QB Chad Henne from the University of Michigan acts like he is calling an audible every single play.
Right. Lifting the leg while in shotgun signals to the center, “Snap the ball when you’re ready, we’re not using the snap count.”
Often times, there is a fake leg lift just so to keep the defense honest.
The other foot signal used by the quarterback is the heel lift, usually done when directly under center and is used to send the receiver in motion.
Another OCD’er athlete is Ivan Rodriguez. Many athletes make the sign of the cross before their at-bat but Pudge does it so relentlessly (religiously?) and before every pitch that it seems to suggest it’s lost its original intent and has crossed over to the coping manifestation line.
Actually it does have benefits. The kicking balls (they’re separate from the footballs used in the rest of the game) will go further if softened up a bit. The kickers are trying to warm up the ball before they kick it.
As the OP mentioned, it’s hard not to notice Sharapova’s serving routine: skip, skip, tuck, tuck, bounce, bounce, serve.
**Rafa Nadal ** also has some odd idiosynchrocies. He is constantly picking his underwear out of his ass. Drives me nuts. Something I had never noticed until Mary Carillo pointed it out is that in between sets he lines up the water bottles under his seat in a neat linear row. She says OCDs are not uncommon among athletes.
Something you wouldn’t notice unless you actually sat in the crowd: When Roddick turns around and faces the crowd in between points, he constantly talks to himself. “You need to work on that second serve.” “What am I supposed to do with that?” It’s kind of creepy.
Mets rookie pitcher Mike Pelfrey sticks out his tongue before every pitch. And I mean Gene Simmon’s quality tongue sticking out; it obscures the tip of his chin. Every pitch.
You can see it on Pelfrey’s MLB page. Click on the “Pelfrey wins debut” video; there’s a good shot of it about halfway through.
Hitters in baseball have rituals too. So do golfers. To some degree it’s about acheiving consistency in performing a specific physical task. You do something exactly the same way every time and it allows you to perform under pressure, under stress, with adrenaline pumping, etc. It makes the actions automatic, less subject to over-thinking, and therefore more consistent. The idea is to make yourself perform free-throws like a robot, no matter what the situation.
It’s not that they go further but that they can be kicked with more accuracy. A softer ball gives you a bigger and more forgiving “sweet spot” and a little better ability to direct he ball with your foot.
Before the “K balls” started being used, kickers used to do all kinds of things to soften up the balls, including microwaving them before games.
And there are rumors of the reverse- old time Texas Longhorn kickers like Jeff Ward are convinced that opposing coaches (Barry Switzer, in particular) had balls refrigerated before games to make long field goals harder for opponents.
Did they actually do it? Would that really have worked? I dunno, and I dunno. But athletes in numerous sports try tricks (like Super Balls in the bat) that physicists insist wouldn’t really accomplish much… so I wouldn’t put it past any coach looking for an edge to try such a thing.
This doesn’t surprise me. If you spend enough time around high-level athletes you can’t help but notice the sheer repetitiveness of much of thier training. Imagine having to do the same task 1,000 times–making serves, shooting free throws, practicing putts, throwing the same out route–it’s enough to drive a normal person nuts. I can easily see how a person could stop noticing any form of repition in the rest of their lives, or see it as no big deal. Making it to the top of the head athleticially already requires obsessive training anyway, so why should it be weird in the rest of a person’s life?
Damn I dislike that man. It’s not only his little ritual. There’s just something I don’t like about him. But, I have to leave the room or close my eyes whenever he starts his thing because it drives me batty.
I was so glad when he left because now I can sit through a whole game.
Mike Hargrove would step out of the batter’s box after each pitch and go through a series of tics so extensive that he earned the nickname, “The Human Rain Delay.”
Mickey Rivers, one of the fastest players in baseball in the seventies, would walk up to the plate looking like a man suffering from rheumatoid arthritis: bent over, stiff gait, dragging his bat behind him. After a swinging strike he would throw his bat down in such a way that it would bounce up spinning end over end, and he would grab it out of the air.
Mark Fydrich, pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, would talk to the baseball before making a pitch. He would get down on his hands and knees in the middle of an inning to groom the mound. He would run over and shake the hand of a fielder who just made a good play.
Rube Waddell, star pitcher for several teams in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, loved to chase fire engines. On days he was to pitch a teammate would be assigned to make sure Waddell got to the ballpark instead of going off after a fire engine.