The numbers game superstitions that are not always easy to laugh off

Sometimes, if you play the lottery long enough, you can develop a sixth sense about these kinds of things. Almost everyone will tell you that’s silly, sure. Those numbers come spilling out of the drum multiple times a day. Most of the time, they mean little to anyone other than the ones who have, say, 4-1-9 on the day when 4-1-9 hits. 

My old man, Mick the Pro, played the same number every day for the last 36 years of his life: 1-6-7. I was born in January ’67. It was never more complicated than that. He won a couple of dollars in 33 years, but more often was simply making his daily donation to the 7-Eleven. Same at the track, or at jai alai; whatever else he played, there was always a 1-6-7 play, even if (usually if) it was an absurd long shot. 

(Though one glorious night in Milford, Conn., 1-6-7 came in at absurdly long odds. That helped pay a tuition bill.) 

“Everyone wants to tell you about hunches after they win,” Mick the Pro once told me. “What I could really use is one of those hunches before I fork over the cash.”