Ever since the sport was invented, baseball players have always had their own obscure superstitions.
You know, players will refuse to wash hats, helmets, or uniforms during winning streaks, never stepping on the foul lines or you’ll receive the wrath of a thousand suns, drawing symbols in the batters box or pitchers mound, etc.
However, what are the good superstitions for getting out of a hitting slump?
Every baseball player goes through it. Sometimes it’ll be something technical in their swing, but most of the time it’s completely mental, where all of a sudden you feel like you couldn’t hit water if you fell out of a boat.
One Hall of Famer suffered one of the worst slumps of his career back in 2004, and it was no other than New York Yankees legend Derek Jeter.
It was so bad, and he couldn’t figure it out, so he was desperate to try anything.
So, what was the remedy?
Turns out, it was a golden thong (yep, you read that correctly).
Jeter made an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where he made the confession during the game “True Confessions.”
He had to pick one of two topics, and his cohosts, Fallon and Rita Ora, had to figure out if he was telling the truth or not.
That’s when Jeter spilled the beans:
“I once wore a thong, in public, in front of thousands of people.”
The hosts thought he was completely lying, but it turns out, he was 100% truthing. He explained that back in 2002, he got a new teammate who always had this golden thong hanging in his locker. He swore that wearing a golden thong was the key to getting out of a slump.
Jeter thought it was nonsense, until he found himself in the worst slump of his life back in ’04.
He recalled:
“Every day I’d walk in, (my teammate) would point at the thong. So, finally, I wore the thong.”
And sure enough, the first pitch he saw while wearing the thong, he homered.
Jeter said that it happened on April 29th, Yankees vs. Oakland Athletics at Yankee Stadium. He was 0-32 at that point, and finally, with the thong, he homered off Barry Zito.
And for the golden thong owner, it turned out to be star first baseman Jason Giambi.
Giambi said in a 2015 appearance on the Dan Le Batard Show:
“The golden thong is legendary. It’s never gotten a hit.”
And for the record, Jeter also confessed that there was never any thong-to-skin contact, he had shorts on underneath:
“I had shorts on underneath. I put the thong over the shorts.”
See, even the all time greats have to do it.
