Shaving your luck

Shaving one's head has been a tradition in sports for a long time. Sometimes it's used to haze the new guys, sometimes it's used to look tougher, and sometimes players do it to change their luck. Consider the Chicago Cubs baseball team.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, which is why Kerry Wood was shaving the heads of some of his fellow pitchers Saturday morning. It's one of those inexplicable unity things athletes do, and you wonder whether devising a secret handshake wouldn't be a lot easier.

Starting pitcher Glendon Rusch arrived in the clubhouse with a hairless head courtesy of someone other than the Barber of Wrigleyville. It was the safe move. You don't want to find out in the chair that Wood doesn't have good mechanics when it comes to cutting hair.

The new-look Cubs took on the Phillies at Wrigley Field hoping the reverse-Samson approach might reverse their fortunes, if not any curses. Nothing else has worked.

Unfortunately, the shaving didn't have the desired effect, at least not the first game after going bald. Perhaps it's because some of the pitchers didn't shave?