MARINERS

Baseball is in my blood. So are baseball superstitions.

I always pick up pennies – they are hits after all – and hairpins – ditto. I never liked to step on the baseline headed to the field, and if there was a catcher's box, forget about it, it had to go.

Graveyards? Crossed fingers. Railroad tracks? Lift the feet off the bus floor. Hard-throwing right-hander on the mound? I'll just sit this one out, thank you. Well, that last one was not a superstition, just kind of a rule I have to keep my average up.

But it's good to know guys in the bigs still have the same quirks. This Geoff Baker story in the Times goes over a few of the M's superstitions and foibles.

Why does baseball have so many? It's simple. Baseball is the most unfair of games. You could get to the plate, nail a 96-mile-per-hour fastball on the nose and line out to left-centerfield thanks to a diving catch by the left-fielder and you're 0 for 1. I could follow, get fooled on a changeup, reach out one handed and dunk the ball 127 feet down the right-field line for a double. It ain't fair, but that's the way baseball is. So you figure one guy is lucky and the other not. Viola, you start following superstitions.

Today's hot list …

• Thus far this spring, the M's say, just about everything is going according to plan.

• As the spring winds down, with a week until opening day, the battle for available roster spots heats up.

• One guy who expects to be ready opening day is closer J.J. Putz, who felt no pain after throwing in the bullpen Sunday.

• Jeff Weaver is the highest-paid fifth starter in baseball (thank you Bill Bavasi), but that doesn't seem to bother him. The right-hander is working on a changeup to throw to lefties. How about a fastball that actually stays in the park?

• The M's won Sunday, but Mike Hargrove wasn't happy about the way they played.

And our question for the day …

• What is the funniest baseball superstition you either had, saw or heard about?

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