Ok, so that’s a mighty big word staring at you in the headline.

Translated, it means “the fear of the number 13″ — an appropriate topic given that we’re 13 days away from the election, Republicans are feeling bullish about their chances, and the one looming question (well, aside from who bothers to vote on Nov. 4) would be what unlucky breaks could befall the GOP.

Here are three possibilities:

1) Act of God. Two years ago, Hurricane Sandy made its way up the East Coast shortly before the election — leaving a path of destruction in a couple of swing states (Virginia and North Carolina) and giving President Obama a much-needed photo-op as the head of a federal government ready to assist in clean-up and recovery along the Jersey shore (you may get sick of these images should Chris Christie seek the presidency). I’m not a meteorologist, so I can’t tell you if there’s enough time for a similar “super-storm” to form in the Gulf of Mexico then make its way to shore in time to screw up the political equation. Still, imagine such destruction hitting, say, Louisiana. Would it give the President another chance to show that Washington can be a source of good? Then again, how would the much-endangered Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu handle the presidential photo-op (the only Democratic president whose company she’s welcoming these days being Bill Clinton)?

2) Act of Terror. I’m not implying that this phrase deserves to be in the same sentence as political “luck”. Still, a terrorist event on U.S. soil would throw a monkey wrench into the election — beginning with the question of whether the vote could be/should be postponed should something that traumatic occur shortly before Election Day. In theory, such an event would force otherwise bickering politicians to rally behind the flag. But like the current back-and forth over ISIS and Ebola, how long would it be before Republicans blamed the tragedy on Obama’s weak leadership, while Democrats went after federal budget cuts and the Bush approach to foreign policy as the roots of all evil?

3) Hoof-in-Mouth Disease. 13 days = 300 hours and spare change = a lot of chances to say something really stupid that causes a few thousand votes to swing and thus cost a candidate an election. It can be piddling stuff such as Charlie Baker, the GOP gubernatorial candidate in Massachusetts, calling a television reporter “sweetheart.” Or something as amusing as First Lady Michelle Obama repeatedly mispronouncing the name of the Democrats’ Senate candidate in Iowa (that’s “Braley”, not “Bailey”). “Let me hit the reset-switch on my brain” moments also apply: Democratic Sen. Mark Udall, for example, being unable to name three books that influenced his life or a song he recently heard. I’d also add to this category: really dumb judgment — as happened a few years ago in Indiana during a spring primary, when a mayoral challenger sent out a campaign mailer featuring the incumbent’s likeness next to those of Saddam, Hosni Mubarak, Moammar Gaddafi, and — if you want to call him a dictator — impeached Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

I never realized that bad hair is the same as bad man.

By the way, as an unrepentant baseball junkie, I completely buy into the idea of “13” and bad luck. Just ask any New York Yankees fan what’s to become of the expensive headache that is their #13 in pinstripes.

And it was the number on the back of the jersey of the guy who threw this unfortunate pitch: