So a few days ago, Mancini said he and his teammates vowed to find something, anything, that could help change their energy. Bearded all season, Mullins had recently shaved. Mancini tried a variation of that tactic: He got rid of everything except his mustache, which his girlfriend doesn’t like and he hates.
“It was kind of a form of self-punishment, but also trying to keep things a little lighter,” Mancini said. “I told all the guys that I was going to shave it off whenever we won.”
It was catcher Austin Wynns, 30, who came up with the idea of burning sage, which is used as a cleansing ritual in some cultures. So, according to Mancini, Wynns bought some online and had it shipped overnight. They lit it on Wednesday afternoon.
“I thought it was like a Pedro Cerrano move out of ‘Major League,’” pitcher Chris Ellis said, referring to the superstitious slugger in the 1989 comedy film. “It was pretty funny. I was just sitting at my locker just going over the lineup for the day and I saw Trey Mancini walking through there with a bunch of sage and everybody was getting a whiff of it.”
Mancini said he and Wynns “walked around the ballpark and just saged everything we possibly could.” He added: “We took a good 15 minutes to just walk around and made sure that we took our time and did it right. And yeah, it worked.”
At first, it didn’t seem as though it had. Right fielder Anthony Santander and Mullins smashed solo home runs off Ohtani in the first inning, but Baltimore’s porous pitching staff coughed up the lead and the Orioles trailed, 6-2, in the fourth.