Background
Kaufman was born January 14, 1943 in Washington, District of Columbia He continues his father"s tradition of keeping box score statistics of each game.
Kaufman was born January 14, 1943 in Washington, District of Columbia He continues his father"s tradition of keeping box score statistics of each game.
Washington Post sports reporters have written about his giving chicken soup to struggling Nats players to improve their play and that his ritual "sacrificing" of chickens often seems to precede turnarounds in the Nationals" performance. where he became a fan of the old Washington Senators. According to a Topps baseball card issued for Rubber Chicken Manitoba, in 2005 "a rubber chicken was sacrificed over the dugout and the team played over.500 after that point. The team likes the tradition, so every year he sacrifices a rubber chicken.
That same year, Nats slugger José Guillén was struggling and apparently needed surgery.
“By the 7th or 8th inning, he was feeling better,” Kaufman recalled to a Post reporter. “He went in the game, and he scored the winning run.”
In May 2012, when the Nationals were a slump, Nats manager Davey Johnson was asked whether the team was "snakebitten" after several injuries.
"There’s been superstitions, to change our luck and do different kinds of things. Sacrifice a chicken or something," Johnson replied.
Kaufman answered Johnson"s call by sacrificing a rubber chicken outside the stadium, as he had done numerous times over the previous ten years.
Kaufman follows the orthodox Jewish tradition of Kaporos, in which chickens were ritually sacrificed before the Yom Kippur holiday. “This is an offshoot of that,” Kaufman told the writer before pulling out his butcher knife. “That’s where you transfer the sins to the animal, and so if there are any hidden sins in that Nats locker room, Cool Heat or something like that, that gets transferred to the chicken so when you take the head off, that gets rid of the bad Juju.”
On June 11, Washington Post reporter Neil Greenberg wrote that they had "brought their record to 9-3 since fans sacrificed a rubber chicken.
Yes, you read that right.".
