hi guys! at work tonight, i found the following column by larry stone of the seattle times. since it's unlikely it'll be published in this area, i thought y'all'd like to see it - for laughs. or comfort, as the case may be.
remember, during the hard times, try scallions. or is it garlic?
happy fourth to y'all.
-mike ____________________________________
By Larry Stone
Seattle Times
(KRT)
SEATTLE ... They are a punch to the gut, a blow to the psyche. They are humiliating, humbling and hurtful.
A player in a slump is a sad sight to behold, equal parts wild-eyed desperation and puppy-dog bewilderment.
And here's the worst part: Every player, from Babe Ruth to Derek Jeter, gets them. It's just a matter of when, how long it's going to last, and how much of your soul gets scorched in the process.
A slump, which derives from the Norwegian ``slumpa,'' can lead to anguish, which often evolves into the Piniellian ``kick the water cooler into submission.''
``A slump is a life-crippling, life-crushing experience,'' said Pete Siegel, a Southern California hypnotherapist who has worked with numerous major-leaguers, including Damion Easley, Tim Salmon and Scott Spiezio.
That's from a clinician. Here's how it looks from the inside, when the weight of the world is inversely proportional to your shrinking batting average ... which is beamed on the scoreboard for the world to see.
``It becomes this all-consuming nightmare,'' said Mariners announcer Dave Valle, who lived through a season-long slump in 1991.
Don Baylor, the Seattle Mariners' hitting coach, made his hands into imaginary scales.
``Sometimes you say, `Base hit, or first-born?' Oh, God. You get where you're consumed with it. Reggie (Jackson) used to talk about it all the time. Food doesn't taste good. A glass of wine doesn't taste good. Sex is no good.''
Slumps move men to desperate measures, ranging from the superstitious to the comical to the ridiculous.
When Tim Naehring was mired in an 0-for-39 slump with the Boston Red Sox in 1991, he had his barber carve ``hit'' into the back of his scalp. Ozzie Guillen sprinkled eyedrops on his bats ``so they could see the ball good.''
Leo Cardenas, Minnesota Twins and Cincinnati Reds shortstop, showered in his uniform to wash away the evil spirits. Red Sox outfielder Mike Greenwell used to collect bats from slumping players, pile them on the clubhouse floor, and perform seances to awaken the dead wood.
Players will alter their equipment, their driving route and their workout routine in an attempt to change their slump karma. If they eat something one day and get a few hits, they'll keep eating it ... and keep wearing the same underwear, too.
``It's kind of pathetic to think a lunch can get you hits in a baseball game, but that's how mental this game is,'' former major-league first baseman Lee Stevens said in 1998.
Ruth was among those who tried to eat his way out of bad hitting. ``Scallions are the greatest cure for a batting slump ever invented,'' the Bambino once said.
But superstition, rituals or other desperate measures (``slump-busters,'' in locker-room parlance) rarely get a player hitting, or a pitcher hitting his spots.
``I cut my mustache off in 1972. Found out it wasn't the mustache,'' Baylor said dryly.
Just keep working
The consensus among baseball people is that the best way out of a slump is good, old-fashioned hard work.
``You just fight,'' said Washington Nationals executive Bob Boone, an ex-major-league catcher helping nurse his two sons, Bret and Aaron, through slumps.
``No one wants to do it. Especially when you get older. I was like, `Oh, man.' You feel one coming on ... that means I've got to work more. When you're going good, you come in, kick back, take a couple of swings, and then it's, `OK, I'll go rest up for the game.' When you're not, `Ah, man, I've got extra BP at 2, then work in the cage.'
``Every guy that's ever put on a jockstrap has gone through it, no matter how good you are, and they're just miserable things. It's like getting the flu.''
But even a focused work regimen can fail to cure a slump once the mind gets sullied. And slumps are famous for messing with rational thought process, particularly with every acquaintance in the world taking on the role of hitting coach.
Invariably, so much information is swirling around a player's brain that he experiences the crippling phenomenon described by former outfielder Bobby Murcer.
As you stand at the plate waiting for your pitch, you start thinking about your stance and your swing and your stride ... ``and then you realize,'' Murcer said, ``that the ball that went past you for a strike was your pitch.''
Branch Rickey put it another way: ``A full mind is an empty bat.'' Mariners outfielder Randy Winn can relate to that.
``If you're struggling, you'll say, `I don't feel like I'm using my hands,' so you tinker with that. The next day, you say, `I feel like my stride is too long,' so you change that. Those type of things can get you deeper in your slump,'' said Winn. ``I try to go back to the basics, take it like it's early in spring training.''
But the deeper one gets into a funk, the more mental it becomes. And the more one faces the mindset that was eloquently described by former infielder Vance Law: ``When you're in a slump, it's almost as if you look out at the field and it's one big glove.''
Pete Rose, the all-time hits leader, took it one step further: ``When you're going like this, it looks like even the umpires have gloves,'' he said during a rare slump.
It was in just such a malaise that former Mariner Russ Davis stormed into Seattle's video room and declared, ``I hate this game. I've got to get out.'' (And, in fact, he did, retiring in 2001 at age 32.)
Harvey Dorfman, the preeminent baseball psychologist and author of the influential ``The Mental Game of Baseball,'' has had to reckon with such defeatism even at the superstar level.
``I've dealt with a couple of great hitters who wanted to quit at midseason,'' Dorfman said. ``They said they couldn't play anymore. It can be an agonizing wait for these guys.''
It can leave you sobbing
A USA Today survey a few years ago determined that hitting a baseball is the most difficult feat in sports.
As a rookie with the Pirates, Barry Bonds had an 0-for-22 hitless streak, and a 1987 article in the Pittsburgh Press described him ``sobbing at his locker, perplexed and defeated by his first slump.''
Robin Ventura must have been twice as perplexed and defeated when he went 0 for 41 in his rookie season with the Chicago White Sox in 1990. Luis Aparicio of the Sox endured an 0-for-44 slump ... and he's in the Hall of Fame.
A fellow named Bob Buhl was 0 for 88 over two seasons, but he was a pitcher, so that hardly counts. By all accounts, the all-time slumpiest position player was Bill Bergen, a catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, who pulled an 0 for 46 in 1909. But for Bergen, it almost doesn't qualify as a slump, considering that his lifetime average in 11 seasons was .170, earning him the uncontested distinction as the worst hitter in the history of baseball.
Just last year, the New York Yankees' Jeter suffered through a horrendous slump that included an 0-for-32 stretch and a .172 April. But by the end of the year, Jeter had worked his way back to a respectable .292 and was just one off his career high with 23 homers.
``With the good hitters, so long as they're comfortable at the plate and you really haven't ticked them off a lot, then they haven't bottomed out yet,'' said Mariners announcer Ron Fairly, a 21-year major-leaguer.
``It's not until he finally gets to the point where he says, `I'm tired of this. I'm going to do something about it.' Then they'll start hitting. Good hitters can do that.''
Mariner gets stuck in a valley
Valle tried just about everything in 1991, when his average dropped below the Mendoza Line and hovered there interminably. He finished the year at .194, and it took a second-half surge to get up that high.
``I was at a point where I got booed every time my name got mentioned in a ballpark,'' said Valle, a catcher. ``It almost felt good to put a mask on my face, and go behind the plate where I could hide.''
The humiliation was compounded when a local bar started a promotion in which the price of beer was determined by Valle's average that day ... until Valle let the owner know he didn't appreciate being associated with a drinking establishment.
``You get to the point you start losing sleep. Every waking moment, you're thinking about it ... will I ever get another hit? It's that hard. You know what you're doing, but you can't stop it.
``It just starts to snowball, to the point you get to the on-deck circle and you don't even want to look at the board, because you can see your batting average. You start thinking, `Maybe if I talk to the guy who takes care of the board, he won't put that up there.' Then you go to the opposing ballpark, and they go, '.170???' And they're all over you.''
For Valle, that epic slump had one redeeming benefit. He can use it as a learning tool with youngsters, teaching them the value of perseverance.
``I can tell them, `Hey, I've lived through hell. I've walked through it every day.' There were days I was driving across I-90 saying, `I don't want to go. In fact, maybe I'm not going to go.' You just get to the point you say, `I don't need this. This is crazy.'
``But it would always come to me: `Can you handle one more game? Yeah, I can handle one more. Then I'm going to the Kingdome.' When you think of people dealing with really difficult things in their life, that's the question: `Can I do it just for today?' It gets to be that heavy.'''
Success equals slump?
Perversely, a slump can sometimes emerge, full-born, out of success. Charley Lau Jr., son of the legendary hitting coach and an eminent hitting instructor in his own right, theorizes that a hitter can become so confident in the midst of a hot streak that he ignores the tenets of successful hitting.
``Let's say you're on fire. What happens? No one can get you out, so you start expanding your strike zone,'' Lau said. ``You get too cocky, reaching too far. Success can cause slumps, too.''
Another manifestation of the same phenomenon occurs when a player scalds the ball, only to have it result in a series of line-drive outs. When the 0-fer is the result of doing everything perfectly (except guide the ball), the wise hitter resists the temptation to alter his swing, clinging instead to the famous Yogi Berra line:
``Slump? I ain't in no slump! I just ain't hitting.''
Yet wisdom is rarely associated with a hitter whose average is plummeting, whatever the reason.
Dorfman remembers working with a Florida Marlins hitter who hit three rockets, right at a fielder. He flopped down on the bench next to Dorfman, who was allowed in the dugout and flashed him a beseeching look.
``You've got to work on your placement,'' Dorfman told him, facetiously.
Dorfman picks up the story from there: ``Next time up, he's fooled, his butt flies out, he sticks out his bat, and hits a blooper over the first baseman's head. He sits next to me, and I say, 'Much better.'
``He saw the irony in that. It was an awful, awful swing, but he was rewarded extrinsically. You have to learn that if you swing like that, you won't get many hits. He was happy he got that hit. I was unhappy because he had an awful approach.
``When a hitter reaches the level that his happiness is based on the way he goes about his at-bats, and his response to his at-bats, that's the elite group. He knows what a slump is and a slump isn't.''
