I took a different route to Fast Breaks that night and parked in a different spot. I was carrying a black pen instead of a blue one and I was starting with a fresh notebook.

Technically, I’m not even a Red Sox fan. Yet on the night of Game 7, I felt compelled to use my own brand of hocus-pocus to send just a sliver of good vibes toward New York.

I did it without much conscious thought. I was responding to inner voices or subtle changes in the magnetic field. Something compelled me to mix up the routine. Maybe approach the door to Fast Breaks from the left rather than the right. Maybe spin in a circle and tap my nose with my pinkie before walking backward into the bar.

You think I’m weird? You should get a load of the people I met there. One guy let his beard grow wild and risked social banishment. A group of friends made sure to order only specific drinks and promised a beating to anyone who strayed from the routine. Still others vowed to be out of the bar by the seventh inning because it had brought the Sox luck before.

They meant it, too.

Lucky jerseys, lucky hats. One woman described herself as the biggest Sox fan ever and yet she wore nothing to indicate as much. Not a single stitch of red, nothing with a “B” on it. Every time she wears the colors, she insists, the Red Sox crumble miserably.

Who among you would call her a fool? In her lifetime, the Red Sox have only been to the World Series once and there they fell flat.

We all have our superstitions. We laugh about them with friends, but to get right down to it, that guy with the weird beard wouldn’t get a trim if you paid him. The group ordering a brand of beer they don’t really like wouldn’t change selections if you offered to buy their brew the rest of the night. The girl with no red on would run screaming if you tried to drape a crimson cloth over her shoulders.

We laugh and we shrug but we really believe it. And who’s to say that the collective compulsions of an entire region of baseball fans don’t generate enough energy to be consumed by a team hundreds of miles away? The Sox won, didn’t they? Would they be heading to the series if I’d used a blue pen instead of a black one?

I’m sure there are Yankees fans with their own strange superstitions. But not nearly as many as those who follow the Sox. The Yankees spend millions more than any team in Major League Baseball. Their good-luck charm is the dollar sign. Why should they grow their hair over their shoulders or get it braided in corn rows that cause teammates to pee themselves with laughter?

Why would a Yankee wear the same socks five nights in a row or grow his hair in the fashion of Sideshow Bob? Good-luck habits are great. But when you have an owner who can buy Alex Rodriguez with the cash in his wallet, you need to keep perspective.

The unified manias of Red Sox fans gave the team the extra push they needed to topple the Yankees giant. I’m sure of it. I have no science to back it up, but I swear – our personal peccadilloes keep bricks from falling on our heads, let us glide to the gas station seconds before the tank runs dry, and keep us on this side of sanity.

I never carry a bar of soap into the shower with me because I’m certain I’ll be hit by a bus later in the day if I do. I always get out of bed on the same side that I got in because I’m sure locusts will swoop down on me otherwise. I never count stairs as I climb them because to do so might result in the horror of a thousand editors.

Some superstitions have a basis in history and some don’t. I never had an ugly experience with a bar of soap. Not once did calamity ensue when I got up on the wrong side of the bed. I have not met a demon at the top of the stairs after counting on my way up.

There is no rationale for these behaviors. Yet, I would snatch you bald if you asked me to alter them. Terrible fate would follow. I believe it and therefore, it’s true.

Some of us just know that to defy our instincts is to spit in the face of destiny. So we do this and don’t do that. We walk backward into bars and we recite the alphabet in pig Latin when things get rough.

A psychologist might tell me I have a mild case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Same for those Sox fans who, on the day of a big game, wear two different shoes, speak only in one syllable words, skip bathing, refuse to look in a mirror, eat only raw eggs, wear their wife’s underwear under their clothing, kiss cats on the lips or refuse to watch the game anywhere except on the roofs of their houses.

The more linear-minded among you (Yankees fans) laugh at us. You tell us victory is the result of strategy, ability and stamina instead of modern-day voodoo and good-luck charms.

But the adherence to superstition is also a form of power and faith. And tell me, won’t you? What was it that really drove the Boston Red Sox to an unimaginable win over the Yankees, when all of logic said that it couldn’t be done?

Power and faith. And the congregation of all those half-mad fans who believed in the unthinkable.

If you care to discuss this further, I’ll be walking down Park Street. Backward.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. He says that if the Red Sox don’t win the World Series, it’ll be a crime.