I’m not the kind of Red Sox fan who believes that good-luck charms can help the team, although I know there are plenty of people who do.

Before the start of each game, they make sure to put on a favorite jersey, preferably one that has not been washed since the beginning of the season so as not to launder out the Beantown mojo trapped inside the fibers. Others wear special caps during the games, or maybe hold the baseballs they caught in the bleachers at Fenway Park. I’ve heard that some fans like to have their old baseball mitts sitting somewhere in the living room, too, or even a bat that can serve as a handy talisman should the need arise.

My brother, a die-hard Mets fan, bought a Boston cap before the start of the recent American League Championship Series in the hopes that wearing it would help the Red Sox defeat the Yankees he hates so deeply. After the Red Sox lost the first three games, however, he threw the cap across the room in disgust and left it where it lay on the floor for the remainder of the series. When the Red Sox came back to win the next four games in historic fashion and clinch the pennant, my brother became certain that throwing that cap when he did had more than a little to do with the gloriously unexpected outcome.

I don’t consider myself superstitious in that way. I’m much worse. For reasons that only a behavioral psychologist could understand, I am convinced, for example, that if I were to actually sit on my living room couch, put my feet up and watch a game in comfort, the Red Sox would never have gotten past the dreaded Yankees, let alone win two games so far against the Cardinals in the World Series.

So I pace constantly, instead, nervously circling the smaller TV set in the kitchen as if my manic movements, strangulated cries and tortured facial expressions were somehow able to channel the appropriate energy right through the cable lines and all the way down onto the field in Boston. The idea of merely sitting in one spot for a big game, squirming occasionally, seems much too passive and nonparticipatory an exercise to do the Red Sox any real good.

I’m not alone, either. Ever since the postseason began, I’ve heard from many people who believe in the power of positive pacing. Some have told me that turning their backs on the TV at critical moments, or even viewing it from the hallway, has been known to spark miraculous game-winning Red Sox rallies. One guy said that he sometimes left his house to sit in his car in the driveway during crucial late innings, confident that listening on the car radio would finally cause the Red Sox bats to come alive in a way that watching TV had failed to do. Worked like a charm against the Yanks, he said.

My wife, a Sox fan by association only, is understandably puzzled by my game-watching quirks and tics. She asks why I don’t just watch the bigger TV in the living room, which would provide me much more valuable pacing room and allow her to use the kitchen for more practical purposes, like cooking dinner. How do I explain to her that the Red Sox simply play better on the kitchen TV – I have the stats to prove it, too – and that the living room is where the Patriots prosper?

Not being an avid Red Sox fan, with a feel for the fragile nature of fan vibes and how easily they can be short-circuited, she’d probably think I was being highly irrational.

Maybe it’s best if I don’t mention anything about the curse until it’s over.