How ’13 Seconds’ demystified (for KC Chiefs fans) a traditionally daunting number
Superstition about the No. 13 is so prevalent that it turns out there’s actually a word for it: triskaidekaphobia. Heck, there’s yet another word for the corollary fear of Friday the 13th: paraskevidekatriaphobia.
According to research cited by History.com, as much as 10 percent of the U.S. population subscribes to the dread of the number. And more than 80 percent of hi-rise buildings in the United States do not recognize a 13th floor.
As of last Sunday, though, it might be surmised that there are far fewer who fret over that number in Kansas City — even as that membership may have risen geometrically in Buffalo.
That “13 SECONDS TO GLORY!”, as The Star themed our special section on Friday, figures to have had a way of purging or demystifying the number for Chiefs fans who had subscribed to that enduring fable. For that matter, it likely changed the context for several players, like Travis Kelce.
“My brother (Jason) wore number 13 growing up in hockey and lacrosse and baseball, (and) he was always beating up on me,” Kelce said Friday. “So that’s the only negative thought that I have on the number 13.
“This past weekend kind of brought some light to it for the first time.”
And no doubt did so for plenty of others who might previously have embraced the attached negative connotation.
One way or another, no Chiefs fan need dread 13 any more than they should fear the (Grim) Reaper.
That’s a notion coach Andy Reid forever reframed with his line about how to deal with the grim when the Chiefs were suddenly down 36-33 … and only had the number of ticks on the clock left that would have become unmentionable here if it hadn’t gone as it did.
(Self-made as the moment was, it bears mention that the sequence may or may not have played out differently had the Bills opted to squib-kick to help drain the clock, a decision that might be considered a fortunate start toward what came next. Or if they’d swarmed Kelce and Tyreek Hill coming off the line of scrimmage. But … we digress.)
Instead, the utterly unfazed Chiefs unfurled Patrick Mahomes’ 19-yard pass to Hill. That set up Mahomes’ “Do it, Kelc” audible of all audibles at the line of scrimmage for another 25 yards to Kelce.
Which in turn teed up Harrison Butker’s game-tying field goal as time ran out and enabled the Chiefs to win 42-36 in overtime and advance to the AFC Championship Game against Cincinnati on Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium.
Reid and Mahomes, incidentally, have never thought much of the number’s implications.
Because Mahomes came to be a fan of Alex Rodriguez, a teammate of his father’s in Texas who later wore No. 13 with the Yankeees, he had a jersey in Rodriguez’s honor but no sense of luck about the number. Reid said he’s not superstitious, though he allowed as how that might have affected his performance in baseball, a sport brimming with superstitions.
“Those guys all have their quirks: I never got into that,” he said, smiling and adding, “That’s why I wasn’t a good baseball player, doggone it.”
So what’s luck have to do with it?
We’ve written a fair amount about that this season, reflecting on how for nearly 50 years after Super Bowl IV the Chiefs were plagued by some combination of bad football and ill fortune.
That made for some wretched seasons and wrenching postseason losses — including many that were memorable for inconceivable twists of fate such as, well, ugh, you know the catalog.
Overdue at least in some cosmic sense, they morphed into the Charmed Chiefs Of The Mahomes Era.
Consider the upsets easing their postseason path in the 2019 season … to Mahomes rather rapidly recovering from what may have been a millimeter away from a season-ending knee injury in Denver … to then-Houston coach Bill O’Brien’s call for a fake punt (sniffed out and snuffed out by Daniel Sorensen) with a 24-7 lead in what became a 51-31 Chiefs win in an AFC Divisional Round game in 2020 en route to the first Super Bowl triumph in half a century.
Some element of happenstance seemed apparent last season, too, when they won eight games by six points or fewer on their way back to the Super Bowl.
This season, that pendulum seemed to swing wildly both ways.
On their way to a distressing 3-4 start, the Chiefs sabotaged themselves with such moments the first lost fumble of Clyde Edwards-Helaire’s career, which just as easily could have been recovered by the Chiefs as the Ravens and ended their last comeback bid in Baltimore.
And remember all those passes, at least six and perhaps more depending on your interpretation, that went off Chiefs before they were intercepted?
That apparent trend began to reverse, though, when the Chiefs got such breaks as Aaron Rodgers testing positive for COVID-19 when they met the Packers and in the form of the Steelers’ virtual giveaway (a sixth-round draft pick) of defensive end Melvin Ingram — whose arrival was nothing less than crucial to a revival of the defense.
For all that, though, here’s the thing about luck.
Many of those aphorisms about it are spot-on.
Like, say, luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. (Think general manager Brett Veach and his staff constantly scouring other rosters and figuring out who might be able to help at the right price … and getting Ingram.)
And the harder you work at something, the luckier you get. (Consider how the Chiefs transformed their season by reversing their uncharacteristic turnover ratio and reverting to their usual form in the Andy Reid era.)
Or this beauty from Tennessee William’s “A Streetcar Named Desire”: “You know what luck is? Luck is believing you’re lucky …” Stanley Kowalski, most famously played by Marlon Brando, says during a poker game. “To hold a front position in this rat-race, you’ve got to believe you are lucky.”
Which isn’t much different than Mahomes talking about getting its “swag” back. Or Mahomes and Reid and others talking about their belief and trust in each other and their calm in the crucible of that 13 seconds.
Because 13 is just a number, no matter how much it’s become entwined or conflated with mischance or mishaps over the centuries. And we do mean centuries.
According to the work and research of Barbara Maranzani for History.com:
“An early myth surrounding the origin of the fear involved one of the world’s oldest legal documents, the Code of Hammurabi, which reportedly omitted a 13th law from its list of legal rules. In reality, the omission was no more than a clerical error made by one of the document’s earliest translators who failed to include a line of text—in fact, the code doesn’t numerically list its laws at all.”
She went on to note two other popular theories of how this grew and grew, each revolving around the appearance of a 13th guest at two ancient events.
“In the Bible, Judas Iscariot, the 13th guest to arrive at the Last Supper, is the person who betrays Jesus,” she wrote. “Meanwhile ancient Norse lore holds that evil and turmoil were first introduced in the world by the appearance of the treacherous and mischievous god Loki at a dinner party in Valhalla. He was the 13th guest, upsetting the balance of the 12 gods already in attendance.”
Because of the weight the number came to hold, over the years I’ve spoken with several athletes about why they chose to wear it.
Then-St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt Warner said his main reason was, in fact, to dispel the notion of luck. He laughed at the idea that many hotels go right from a 12th floor to a 14th.
“It’s kind of become a symbol of my faith and a tool I can use,” he told me in 2002. “Basically, I’m saying that my strength is much bigger than superstitions and things like that.”
In a 1993 interview, incoming Mizzou basketball player Julian Winfield told me he had a different reason for wanting to wear the number.
“Thirteen is a bad-luck number; I’ve had enough of it,” he said, meaning bad luck.
So, he figured, wearing it would be an immunization of sorts.
“I guess it’s like the measles,” he said. “When you get the shot for the measles, you’re not supposed to get it. I’ve had my shot of number 13 … so that means I can’t have it anymore.”
Now Chiefs fans have to feel inoculated from it, too.
Even if luck in the form of random chance still lurks over it all, at least the No. 13 needn’t be unnerving in the equation.
This story was originally published January 28, 2022 at 2:53 PM.