Baseball players are some of the most superstitious people on the planet, but this might be taking things a little too far.
Ryan O’Rourke, a relief pitcher for the Minnesota Twins, has appeared in 54 career MLB games and, apparently, he has puked before every one. Sometimes it’s in the clubhouse, sometimes it’s on the back of the mound. According to his interview with Twincities.com though, he's pretty good at hiding it:
“I don’t do it in the public’s eye,” O’Rourke said Tuesday. “I go in the bathroom, or sometimes it’s just on the back of the mound. But, yeah, it happens.”
In the rest of the interview, O'Rourke has fun with it, even talking about a comparisson to Bill Russell (Who also had a tendency to thrown up before big games), but this could actually be pretty harmful. If he does this in the minors too, that could be 107 times throwing up before a game in the last two seasons, and many times before that. That could be a dangerous amount of vomit that could damage his body.
Obviously he knows his body better than us though, and it's not like it's something he's been hiding from people. He jokes around with the staff about it and Clearly his teammates are aware of his habits too:
It’s not like he does it on purpose though, he just gets nervous on the mound.
(H/T to FTW)
