UU150 Study Guide - Final Guide: Trobriand Islands
How does the risk and uncertainty in pitching and
hitting affect players? How do they try to exercise
control over the outcomes of their performance?
These are questions that I first became interested
in many years ago as both a ballplayer and an
anthropology student. Iād devoted much of my
youth to baseball, and played professionally as first
baseman in the Detroit Tigers organization in the
1960s. It was shortly after the end of one baseball
season that I took an anthropology course called
āMagic, Religion, and Witchcraft.ā As I listened to
my professor describe the magical rituals of the
Trobriand Islanders, it occurred to me that what
these so-called āprimitiveā people did wasnāt all
that different from what my teammates and I did
for luck and confidence at the ball park.
George Gmelchās famous description of the rituals
and routines that surround baseball demonstrate
how taboos are born (the prohibition on shaving
during the playoffs), how objects and actions can
take on special importance, for example, where
special clothing is worn such as a lucky pair of
unwashed socks (thereby fetishizing the object and
imbuing meaning on it as something that has the
power to aid or protect its owner against, among
other things, losses), all in the name of appeasing
what Gmelch calls āthe baseball godsā. During this
period the taboos, rituals, and fetishes of baseball
season, and in particular playoff season, shapes
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