The Tesh

John Tesh at one point was an announcer for the 1996 Olympics on NBC. We all knew his smooth voice from being on various entertainment shows and radio. He's a knowledgeable man, but was terrible luck for the ice skating Olympians.

A skater would dance on the ice, Tesh would say things like "This skater just needs to nail this triple axle and she'll win the gold." Two seconds later she'd be skidding on the ice on her butt, hopes of a gold lost.  This happened more than once. Having watched and observed this, my family decided to call this sportscaster's jinx "teshing".

Now, every time we watch the Yankees, we have to worry about teshing.  Commentators, especially baseball commentators, are fixated on what could happen if...  "If Derek Jeter hits this ball right now, he'll beat Lou Gehrig's record."  Jeter strikes out. "If A-Rod hits this home run, he'll be the youngest player to hit 500. A-Rod flies out.

Unfortunately, their own commentators seem to be the worst offenders. It's bad enough that all non-YES network announcers hate the Yankees, but it's really irritating when their own announcers jinx their performance.

The baseball jinx is not a new thing. Baseball players and fans are notoriously superstitious. If a fan is eating ice cream and the Yankees hit a home run, well then that fan will be eating a ton of ice cream.

So, one wonders why baseball announcers don't understand that they're jinxing the team every time they say things like that.  It boggles the mind.  They'll say there's no such thing as a jinx... but we know better. We watched Tesh.