Over the years, Hawk Harrelson has some crazy things when it comes to his White Sox. Being the most homerific announcer in Baseball doesn’t help things and neither does blaming the teams road woes on varying sound waves within certain stadiums. From Sox Machine via Big League Stew

Hawk (revealed his) totally insane theory on how home field advantage is grounded in the way that sound waves affect the subconscious minds of players.

According to Hawk, who stated that he has been formulating this theory for thirty years, the subconscious ‘eats whatever the conscious feeds it,’ and when the sound waves in a stadium “bounce around” the inside of a player’s skull, it creates “positive vibes” or “negative vibes,” depending on whether that player is home or away. There you have it folks–the science of home field advantage.

Now I don’t know the intricacies of how these elements (vibes, sound waves, the conscious and subconscious mind) interact — perhaps I wasn’t listening closely enough — but Hawk rambled on about this for the duration of half an inning. The hilarious part is the fact that this wasn’t enough for DJ, who, after a commercial break, brought it up again and asked Hawk to delve deeper into his theory. “Now I don’t know anything about sound waves,” Hawk clarified before summarizing his theory once again. Really, Hawk? No formal training in acoustics? He was probably too busy studying how the conscious “feeds the subconscious.” Whatever, though. I was just waiting for Hawk to command DJ to board the Spruce Moose at gunpoint.

Wow. I don’t even know where to even start with that one. I mean noises can obviously distract players, but “positive and negative vibes” whether you’re on the road? That’s a little too “New Wave” for me. Hopefully Steve Stone can rein Hawk in a bit next season before he starts wearing tin-foil hats into the booth.

Hawk Harrelson believes ‘sound’ is key to winning and losing (Big League Stew)
Four goats feeding on plastic grass (Sox Machine)