I’ve always been superstitious when it comes to watching sports. Everyone knows that where I watch or what I eat/drink or wear impacts the outcome of a game played by talented professional athletes thousands of miles from where I am watching. (Please sense the sarcasm.)
But I am a good-luck charm for my favorite professional teams. I have a strong history of “helping” them either end a long title drought or capture their first championship.
Major League Baseball
The New York Yankees are the ultimate professional franchise when it comes to winning. But after the Bronx Bombers won the World Series in 1962, there was a decline until 1977. Forget Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson and Mickey Rivers for ending that drought. I was born in 1967, saw my first Yankees game in 1975 at Shea Stadium where the team played home games as its new (now demolished) stadium was being constructed. Two years later, the Yankees are back on top of the world.
Merch: I have a New York Yankees helmet that is a Scentsy warmer.
National Football League
The New York Giants last won an NFL Championship in 1958. I saw my first Giants game in 1977, when Walter Payton was gunning for a 2,000-yard season. The Giants held Payton to just 49 yards but managed to lose 12-9. The Giants would return to the postseason in 1981, then capture that first Super Bowl. Of course, the Super Bowl couldn’t happen until I saw the G-men in person. Lawrence Taylor and Phil Simms may have also contributed.
Merch: I bought this celebratory mug at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1987.
National Basketball Association
I loved watching highlights of George Gervin and James Silas in the late 1970’s so I became a San Antonio Spurs fan. Growing up in Connecticut didn’t give me much of a chance to see them play, especially when Dad wasn’t a big NBA fan.
The Spurs had never won a title but flirted with success with David Robinson. In 1998, I moved to El Paso, Texas, and made a trip to the Alamodome for my first game. It just happened to be the night where they honored 25 years of the franchise. Every fan received a poster that listed every play who had played for the team. It’s framed now.
The next season, the Spurs won their first championship. I think me seeing them in person probably had more to do with it than some guy named Tim Duncan.
Merch: The aforementioned poster
National Hockey League
I became a Buffalo Sabres fan in the mid-1970’s when they had a great goalie named Don Edwards and they came close to a Stanley Cup in 1975. I only went to one NHL game as a kid when I saw the Hartford Whalers play the New York Rangers.
In 1998, the Sabres hosted a playoff game a few days before I was moving to Texas from Ohio. I seriously thought about road-tripping from Columbus to see the game. I opted out as as the responsible thing since I was moving and didn’t have a job lined up. The Sabres went on to the Stanley Cup Finals the next season, but Brett Hull was in the crease and that ended poorly. For years, I wondered if my decision not to travel to Buffalo for that playoff game jinxed the Sabres.
The stars recently aligned for me to right that historic wrong. The Sabres were playing in Columbus on the same weekend of the PBR10K, so I booked a flight (despite having just come back from a week in Cabo) and was fortunate enough to have a friend with a ticket connection. We sat in Section 111 and watched a really bad hockey game in a really nice arena. The most important thing was I had now seen the Sabres play, which of course, will now allow them to win a Stanley Cup.
Hopefully in my lifetime.
Merch: Fittingly, I have a Sabres garbage can in my office that I found at a going-out-of-business sale back in the late 90’s in Texas.
Nick Jezierny is a graduate of Ohio University and a former sports journalist who worked at papers in Connecticut, Ohio, Texas and Idaho. He resides in Garden City, Idaho. Since leaving the sports writing profession, he prefers watching and writing about music compared to sports. He still keeps tabs on his favorite teams, which is probably a bad thing since it’s been 10 years since a championship (unless you count UConn basketball).