Just in time for opening day, Simon & Schuster releases The Juju Rules: Or, How to Win Ballgames From Your Couch: A Memoir of a Fan Obsessed. In it, Hart Seely, author and award-winning reporter for the Syracuse Post-Standard, reveals his tried-and-trusted techniques for influencing the outcome of baseball games—especially those of his beloved Yankees—through the mystical power of Juju, the armchair athlete’s system of magical thinking that has help propel many a half-deluded fan through a hopeless season. In this excerpt from the first chapter, Seely explains the principles of Juju.

from The Art of Juju

I don’t watch Yankee games. I work them. I pour myself into each pitch, certain that my movements, my physical and mental actions, have an impact — and that somehow, I matter.

I sit one way when the Yankees are at bat, another way when they’re in the field. If three Yankees get consecutive base hits, I note where I am and what I am doing. It’s instinctive. It’s beyond my control. Some region of my brain records stance and whereabouts, then scours the universe for a psychic link to the game, like a police scanner roaming for signals. If I’m in the kitchen, as long as the Yankee hits keep com- ing, I’ll stay planted. If I’m on the phone, I’ll keep talking — my own private Utica. I never tamper with Yankee success.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not a fool, a laughingstock, or a clown. It takes at least three hits to sell me on a juju position. I agree with the supervillain Auric Goldfinger, who explained to James Bond, “Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action.”

That was a man who recognized the power of threes. So did the architects of baseball. Three strikes, you’re out. Three outs per in- ning. Three outfielders. Three bases. Nine fielders—three times three. Twenty-seven outs — three times three times three. Babe Ruth wore three. He hit sixty home runs, ten times three, in 1927. Three is the first odd prime number. America put three golf balls on the moon. Bad luck happens in threes. And when the Yankees record three straight hits, it’s not happenstance, it’s not coincidence, it’s not Toronto pitching. Something has flared in the universe, and if you want to win the game, damn it, it’s no time to switch chairs.

Listen: I am not a kook.

Friends will tell you I’m a straight thinker, a realist, a regular guy. I don’t do hooey. No shaking of beads. No pyramids, no magnets, no crop circles in Area 51. Aside from my father’s sawhorse, I have yet to meet a mystery that cannot be explained through third-grade science. I don’t believe in UFOs, Bigfoot, or Nessie. I don’t even believe that for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows. Seriously, do the math.

I’m normal. Get it? I drive six miles over the speed limit because the cops can’t nail you at six. I keep library books an extra day because they give you a grace period before the overdue fine kicks in. I’m too educated to play the lotto, too disciplined to run off with a floozy, too wily to get caught checking girlie websites at work. I married a great woman and raised three great kids. When I walk down the street, peo- ple say, “There goes a run-of-the-mill, totally average, regular slob. Just don’t get him started on the Yankees.”

Because when the Yankees lose, I blame myself. Always have.

Listen: I realize there is no way my physical and mental gyrations on a living room couch in upstate New York can affect a ballgame a thousand miles away.

It cannot happen. It does not happen. It will never happen.

But what if, on a certain day, a certain person happens to move a certain way, which sends a certain wave of unknown energy particles —let’s call them Rizzutons—through a certain unexplained worm- hole, causing a certain 90 mph fastball to hang like a Christmas orna- ment in the center of a certain batter’s wheelhouse?

I’m not saying it happens. I’m just saying that until a few years ago, we called Pluto a planet. We still don’t know what electricity is — I don’t, anyway — or why extension cords always knot up when left alone, or why elevators stop at certain floors when there’s nobody wait- ing to step aboard. Don’t call it happenstance. Don’t say coincidence. It’s direct action. The only question is whether it stems from friend or foe.

In my life as a Yankee fan, I have devised offensive and defen- sive schemes that should win at least ninety-five games per season. In most years, that clinches a wild card berth. It’s not my fault if both Boston and Tampa win ninety-six.

When we’re at bat, I confront the TV head-on, eyeballing the screen with a belly-on-fire intensity, my face a heart-attack red and clenched into the kind of zombie grimace commonly linked with dis- graced celebrities on the cover of the National Enquirer. I bend my knees slightly (good for the back, by the way) and assume the cobra- coiled stance of a mixed-martial-arts fighter.

Because that’s what I am. Sort of.

Of course, I do not practice kickboxing on my TV. Such an act would be not only cowardly but also counterproductive. I would lose my direct link to the YES Network, the official Yankee government news agency, and my primary wormhole for Rizzutonic transmis- sions.

I work between pitches. I pace the room — touching objects, reach- ing corners, experimenting—always returning to my juju spot, my lotus point, one micromoment before the pitcher begins his windup. No matter how far I roam, I return to my juju spot at the moment of delivery. If I’m a nanosecond late, we have squandered the pitch.

It might be a ball in the dirt. Maybe the Yankee batter will stroke a base hit. Whatever happens, though, he would have done better had I completed my rounds.

On defense, I switch gears, usually pitching directly to the screen. Sometimes I lie bonelessly on the couch, eyes nearly closed, cobralike (I do enjoy cobra analogies), to lull the enemy bats to sleep. This in itself can be draining, especially late at night. At times, I’ve woken up horrified to learn our bullpen crapped away my hard-earned lead.

The game of baseball affords thinking fans at least twenty-five sec- onds between pitches—enough time to ponder not just this game but also the disappointment we are to this world, and to ask, for once in our miserable, straight-to-home-video lives, How can we help our team?

The answer is juju: an anecdotal science rooted in the theory that every living being has a cosmic purpose, and yours just might involve a couch and a channel changer.

What if I told you the Yankees’ twenty-seven world champion- ships resulted not from great players, wise managers, or even the avalanche of money regularly bestowed by its owners — but from the collective juju, the Rizzutonic emissions of twenty million fans, the largest base of sports whack jobs on this planet?

Obviously, I’d be kidding, right?

Seriously, it would be insane to believe such nonsense, right?

We all know better . . . right?

Because that’s what Cubs fans say.