Repetition in a stable context makes behaviour more automatic.
More quotesWade Boggs tied several pre-game rituals to the number seventeen. Batting practice began at 5:17. Wind sprints began at 7:17. The timings became famous enough for an opponent to reach into the routine without going near the player. Toronto manager Bobby Cox asked the scoreboard operator to skip directly from 7:16 to 7:18.
That is exquisite gamesmanship because the intervention was tiny. No rule changed. No pitch moved. A public clock displayed two consecutive numbers chosen by the home side. Boggs had made an external object part of his preparation, so the opposition acquired a switch connected to it.
Useful routines live in the player’s body: where to place the feet, how to breathe, what to look at, when to begin the movement. They reduce decisions and give attention somewhere specific to go. Exact times, particular meals and one indispensable route hand parts of that preparation to kitchens, traffic, weather and scoreboard operators. The more famous the dependency becomes, the easier it is for somebody else to touch.
The source does not say Boggs collapsed, played badly or reacted at all. Adding that would improve the anecdote and falsify it. Cox’s move remains revealing without the invented ending. A superstition had become legible to an opponent; an opponent used the machinery available in the stadium. In the control booth, the displayed clock changed from 7:16 to 7:18.