Bad Luck

If there's any truth to the superstition that breaking a mirror brings bad luck, workers in a Ukrainian mirror factory can look forward to many years of ill fortune. The workers smashed about 11,000 defective mirrors that could have been sold at a reduced price, according to a letter in the Communist Party daily Pravda on Wednesday. A reader from the town of Vinnitsa complained that trade union officials and management brushed aside his objections that it was a pity to waste the mirrors.

The best-laid plans of the Forum Championship Tennis series went astray Monday night--again--although this was an improvement. This time, the 4,831 fans who paid as much as $50 a seat got almost a full set from those they had come to see. In the past, the 11-month-old project of tournament director Jeanie Buss has been a sore spot for some of the game's top players. Literally. Jimmy Connors inaugurated the series last April by withdrawing with a back injury.

Did you know that a player in the world's first baseball game, in Hoboken, N.J., on June 19, 1846, was fined 6 cents for swearing? Or that Ty Cobb walked with lead in his shoes to maintain lower-body strength? These are tidbits in the vast "Ripley's Believe It or Not" archives. But what's also interesting is the story behind Robert Ripley.

One questionable decision and one bit of bad luck. That's all it took Wednesday to put a dent in Hollywood Park's hopes for a memorable holiday weekend. The Inglewood track had scheduled $100,000-added stakes races on 4 consecutive days and was looking forward to ending the first half of its fall meeting on an upbeat note.

So you're planning to spend this Friday--the dreaded 13th--hiding under your bedclothes. The bad luck that's supposed to go with the day will have to work hard to find you, right? Well, you might not have to pull a disappearing act after all--because you're about to learn seven guaranteed ways (trust us) to ward off any misfortune that might be waiting to pounce on you.

It might have well been raining in Milwaukee. It sure was coming down on Phil Garner's parade. In the matter of a few hours, he: --Learned that his Punch-and-Judy lineup wouldn't be getting Danny Tartabull because the New York Yankees, as badly as they want to be rid of him, won't pay him $4 million to play for the Brewers.

For the longest time, Mike Haupt has been unable to avoid bad breaks. He has always been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He got offered a scholarship once and said he wanted to think it over. When he decided to accept, he discovered the school had given it to someone else. Another time, he was a member of a championship basketball team. But when the team won its title, Haupt was home in bed with a kidney stone. Until a month ago, it seemed that the bad breaks would never end.

In the year of the great leap forward, the Orioles are about to hit a wall -- the one with Ben McDonald's name written on it. We know the name. We know how he used to wrestle alligators all by himself and now wrestles (with the help of an agent or two) Orioles. We know, too, that the Orioles made him the No. 1 pick in the June draft, and that the Orioles, in desperate need of strong, young arms, are on the verge of losing this strong, young arm of exceptional promise.

So many bad things have happened to Keith Mullin when he has played in the Old Mission Beach Athletic Club Over-the-Line World Championships that he shudders to think what could be next. He lined the first pitch he saw in last year's men's open final into the crowd, where the ball hit his mother square in the mouth. On Tuesday, while playing a practice game, he dislocated a vertebra in his back. On Wednesday he lay on the floor and waited to see a doctor.

Have you noticed how important bad luck has become to today's crime novels? Take the case of Robert Crais' new "Hostages" (Doubleday, 373 pages, $24.95), a tense thriller whose plot is triggered by the misfortunes of three slackers. First, with all the mini-marts in Southern California, the trio picks one with a gun-happy clerk who they inadvertently kill.