the grief-therapy call: the Show is where you understand primitive
You don’t know from true bug-eyed athletic superstition till you hit the pro ranks, Hallie. When you hit the Show is when you’ll understand primitive. Winning streaks bring the native bubbling up to the surface.
Context
Orin, the one Incandenza who actually made a pro career, ranks the superstition by altitude: "You don't know from true bug-eyed athletic superstition till you hit the pro ranks... When you hit the Show is when you'll understand primitive." The Show — the career-fate the whole academy is pointed at — is figured here not as arrival but as the place the ritualized body goes fully feral: unwashed jockstraps standing up in overhead compartments, "bizarrely ritualized dressing, eating, peeing." The reward for reaching the top is the deepest regression.