Everything needs to align perfectly for the Ravens Saturday night. We need the guy from the Boston Globe -- Gasper or something -- to say Baltimore doesn't have a chance of winning. I need to put the Joe Flacco bobblehead that I got at the gas station in Govans on top of the TV, just like I had it Sunday afternoon. I need to start another pot of corn chowder. I need to wear one black sock and one blue sock. I must refrain from sending any positive-sounding text messages until half time, while sitting on the left end of the couch, with my head next to the lamp and the cactus plant.

That's what needs to happen for a Ravens win against the Indianapolis Colts.

It would be nice if Terrell Suggs strips Peyton Manning of the ball -- or his pants -- on Indy's first possession. It would be swell if Ray Rice goes 86 yards on his first carry, or even his second.

But it's not going to happen, my fellow Baltimoreans, unless we do exactly what we were doing where we were doing it Sunday afternoon when the Ravens became possessed by supernatural forces and knocked the will to live out of the New England Patriots in the first 10 minutes of a playoff game the Ravens were supposed to lose.

Please join me in re-creating conditions for an extraordinary Baltimore win Saturday in Indianapolis. Thank you very much.

It's not that I'm ridiculously superstitious -- OK, maybe a little -- or that I don't believe in the Ravens. I believe they came up with the winning game plan to beat the Patriots, and I believe Ray Lewis, among others, performed at a level of cunning and ferociousness we have not seen in weeks. They rose to the challenge. They dominated. It reminded some of us of the Super Bowl run of 2001.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Let's get the bobblehead on top of the TV. Let's start another pot of corn chowder. Let's do the blue sock/black sock thing accidentally-on-purpose.

All karmic forces must be in play to beat the Colts.

As you might recall, just three Januaries ago the Ravens played the Colts at home in a post-season game on a Saturday night, and it was absolutely miserable. It was one of the worst, most eye-glazing experiences ever -- and not just because the Ravens lost, but because the whole world was watching to see if, in a nationally televised playoff game, Baltimore would finally exact some revenge from the Irsay family for taking the Colts out town in 1984.

We didn't come close, though the score was 15-6.

Of course, by 2007, few Baltimore football fans admitted to even thinking about a Ravens-Colts game as any kind of grudge match for what had happened 23 years earlier. Most of us had moved on.

But Baltimoreans of a certain generation still experience emotional agita when they see the blue-and-white uniform -- Johnny Unitas' uniform! -- and the horseshoe on the helmet. They remember those 12 years without a football team, and the sneering Tagliabue insults, and all the frustrations of trying to get a new franchise, and the state of Indiana having had the nerve to sell commemorative license plates bearing No. 19!

So I'm not saying history doesn't fuel the Ravens-Colts rivalry. It does, though not so much anymore.

What we have here is a rivalry that stands on its own. And it's exactly what a football fan from the Patapsco Drainage Basin wants for a January story line, something like what we had going into last Sunday's game at Foxboro -- an underdog Baltimore team against a great quarterback endowed with formidable gifts, hyped and overexposed, the object of a media man-crush.

I'd say those are perfect conditions for the Ravens.

That and my Flacco bobblehead on the TV, a pot of corn chowder on the stove, one blue sock and one black sock. Thank you very much.

Dan Rodricks' column appears Thursdays and Sundays in print and online, and Tuesdays online-only. He is host of the Midday talk show on WYPR-FM.