“Luck, be a lady tonight.”---Robert Alda
Does Luck exist? Is it a thing, like gravity or pickled herring or is it just another myth to be winked at and discarded? And if it is in fact a thing, why do some people win the lottery four times while others invariably drive into potholes? Inquiring minds want to know.
Richard Wiseman thinks he’s got a handle on it. An author and psychology professor at the University of Hertfordshire, Wiseman wrote a book about luck and in the process discovered that there really are such things as lucky and unlucky people. “We worked with exceptionally lucky and unlucky people in our research,” he says. “There are huge differences in their lives. Lucky people are always in the right place at the right time, unlucky people just can’t catch a break. I think a big part of that, though not all, is the way in which they’re thinking and behaving.” Wiseman posits that psychological behaviors are what determine the luck a person perceives in his life.
“People who believe lucky things happen to them tend to fare better than people who feel unlucky,” Wiseman claims. “The lucky people tend to bounce back from adversity while the unlucky ones get dragged down by failure. The lucky people are flexible thinkers more open to opportunities when they come along. As Seneca once said, ‘Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.’ If you feel unlucky, change up what you’re doing, take a different way home from work, change your TV shows, look for a different type of partner. You can absolutely change your luck.”
Maybe. But how do you explain the guys below?
Strike One!
On August 24, 1919, Ray Caldwell put on a Cleveland Indians uniform for the first time. It was a brutally hot day, but clear as the game started. Just waived by the Boston Red Sox, Caldwell was at the crossroads of his career and another bad outing could mean the end of his major league pitching days.
Five years earlier, Ray was the bees’ knees, a transcendent talent on his way to becoming one of the greatest pitchers ever, but demon alcohol got in the way and knocked him out of the box. Cleveland manager Tris Speaker, in a desperate push for the playoffs, got him for almost nothing from the Bosox and gave him one more chance.
Ray Caldwell was on his game that day against the Philadelphia Athletics, mowing down batter after batter with an above-average fastball and an elite curve. In a pinch, he went to his devastating out pitch, one of baseball’s best spitters, still legal in 1919. After eight innings, the A’s had only four hits and a walk and the game looked in the bag for the home boys. A few fans headed for the exits, noting rain clouds coming in from over Lake Erie. Then, a funny thing happened on the way to the clubhouse.
Caldwell got two easy infield outs, the latter in a now-pouring rain. As he got set to pitch to Philly shortstop Ray Chapman, however, a violent lightning strike exploded down the middle of the field. Chapman felt a surge of electricity go down a leg and yowled like a scalded dog. The Cleveland fielders dove for the ground. “I took off my mask and threw it as far as I could,” said Indians catcher Steve O’Neill. “I was afraid the metal in the mask would get me killed.”
Five seconds after the bolt hit, everybody looked around. Everyone seemed okay except for their newest teammate. Ray Chapman was laying on his back, arms spread wide, out cold, the victim of a direct hit. The players rushed over to Caldwell but the first man who touched him jumped back with a shout. He’d been zapped by Caldwell’s prone body. The players just fell back and stared at Caldwell’s chest, still smoldering from where the bolt hit. The observers were terrified to touch him and nobody did. “Ray’s dead,” one of them murmured and nobody doubted it.
Enter Lady Luck, stage left. Suddenly, Caldwell started groaning, crawled back to his knees, then stood for his immortal sentence: “I have one more out to get!” Nobody moved. “Give me the danged ball and turn me toward the plate!” he insisted. Who’s going to argue with the Lightning Man? Everyone went back to their positions and A’s shortstop Jumping Joe Dugan came up to bat. Caldwell’s first pitch was down the middle and Dugan laced it to third, where Willie Gardner picked it up and threw him out. Fait accompli!
After the game, a ragged Caldwell told a Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter, “It felt like somebody picked up a board and whacked me on top of the head. But I got a complete game win, so what the hell!” If Ray hustled out of the locker room to the nearest bar that day, nobody complained. They were probably all in there with him.
That’s The Way That The World Goes ‘Round
When it comes to luck, it’s hard to beat Frano Selak, often called the luckiest unlucky man in the world. In 1962, Selak survived a train accident that killed 17 people. In 1966, a bus he was riding in skidded off the road, drowning four, but not Frano, who swam to shore with just a few cuts and bruises. Two years later, while teaching his son how to hold a gun, Selak shot himself in the testicles. In both 1970 and 1973, he experienced automobile accidents in which the cars caught fire; Frano escaped without a scratch. In 1995, he was hit by a bus in Zagreb; no sweat, just minor injuries. A year later, he avoided a collision with a truck by swerving into a guardrail, causing Frano (no seat belt, of course) to fall 300 feet into a ravine. Fate finally decided Selak had enough. In 2003, he won the Croatian national lottery, earning him a prize of one million euros. If at first you don’t succeed….
Lucky Ducks
We always try to be nowhere in the neighborhood when an Atomic Bomb goes off. Not so, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, an employee at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, who was in Hiroshima on business in 1945 when the first nuclear bomb was dropped. Although he was injured, Tsutomu survived the blast. You’d think that would enough fun for one guy, but not Mr. Yamaguchi. After a quick recovery, he returned to the family home in---you guessed it---Nagasaki, just in time for the second whoop-de-doo. Now, this sort of thing is enough to piss off even Mary Poppins so Tsutomo became a vocal protestor for the rest of his life. In a memorable comment on the matter, he once said “Well, you know, it kinda gripes my butt.” In 2009, Japan officially recognized Yamaguchi as a survivor of both blasts, making him the only person in the world to survive two nuclear explosions. He lived to a ripe old age of 93, just to be ornery.
It’s bad enough to be blind and deaf, but that wasn’t good enough for Edward E. Robinson. Eddie was wandering around the yard looking for his chicken while swinging his aluminum cane when it started to pour. Robinson took refuge under the only tree in the area, which was just too tempting for wandering lightning. They say the odds of getting struck by the stuff are 1 in 12,000 but that day they were 100% for Eddie. He lay on the ground for 20 minutes before stumbling to his feet and struggling back to his house and going to bed (“Getting hit by lightning can tire you out,” he later advised.) Surprisingly, when Robinson woke up later in the evening, he could see and hear. His stunned doctor said Eddie likely survived the blast due to the rubber-soled shoes he was wearing. “Normally, I wouldn’t recommend getting hit by lightning,” said the doc, “but if you’re blind and deaf and can’t find your chicken….”
Everybody over seventy knows who Scrooge McDuck is. “He’s the richest duck on the pond,” avers his nephew, Donald. But how did he get that way? How does a duck born in Scotland of poor but honest parents wind up in America with a money bin in his back yard? It’s a long but inspiring story.
When Scrooge was ten years old, he was dead broke. He earned his first dime by cleaning the mud from Butch the ditchdigger’s shoes. Surrounded by poverty, McDuck knew early on he had to go elsewhere to find his fortune. In his teen years, he traveled the world working and sent most of his money home. Eventually, he got lucky, finding an enormous gold nugget while prospecting in the Yukon. Some say he then hired a mob of thugs to chase a tribe of locals away and took over their territory. Others argue that Scrooge was an honest fellow who “made his fortune being tougher than the toughies and sharper than the sharpies.”
Scrooge, himself, once admitted “It was just dumb luck, but dumb luck is better than no luck at all. But I don’t care what people call it. I love my money bin. I like to dive into it from my diving board. I like to burrow through it like a gopher. I like to throw the money up in the air and have it come down and hit me on the head. If this is luck, I’ll take all you got!”
Luck. Fact or fiction? Chuck LeMasters is alive. Steve Ringer prospers. Bill Killeen is schmoozing with Rhonda Vincent. Marty Jourard is mayor of Seattle. Is there any doubt?
That’s all, folks….
