The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking goes on sale today. By (spooky!) coincidence, today is also the fourth anniversary of the incident that opens the book—an event asserting America’s belief in voodoo. On April 12, 2008, two men pulled a shirt out of a hole in the ground and lifted it before a mass of media. Somehow this shirt, and this hole, were kind of a big deal.
The shirt was a baseball jersey with the name and number of David Ortiz, a star player for the Boston Red Sox. The hole was a freshly jack-hammered void in the concrete of the New York Yankees’ expensive new stadium. In 2007 a mischievous construction worker had buried it there, and word had just got out. The Yankees, and their fans, wanted it gone. Continue reading