Joyner’s Early Season Slump Is Now Merely a Lesson

Two weeks ago, Wally Joyner sat in the whirlpool in the Angels’ clubhouse wallowing in depression. For the first time in his short-but-already-illustrious career, Sweet Wally couldn’t bear to face the press.

The season was only 12 games old, but Joyner’s batting average had fallen to .192, he had driven in just five runs and hadn’t hit a ball out of the park after batting practice since August of 1986.

And the slump was magnified by a Sunday at the park that was certainly no picnic. He had made a throwing error in the ninth inning that opened the door for a pair of Minnesota runs and then ended the game by stranding the tying run on third in a 6-5 loss to the Twins.

He was down so low even the bubbles in the whirlpool couldn’t buoy his sinking spirits. An hour and a half after the game ended, veteran pitcher Don Sutton emerged from the training room and asked a group of reporters who were waiting for Joyner to abandon the vigil as “a personal favor to me.”

The next day, Manager Gene Mauch said he wasn’t concerned about his young first baseman’s psyche, fragile as it seemed at the moment.

“It’s a little early to be so upset but I’m not worried about him,” Mauch said. “He’s just young. After’s he been in the league three or four years, a slump like this won’t even faze him.

“You’ve seen it before and you’ll see it again. When you hit rock bottom, things will get better. He’ll be all right.”

Indeed, the kid is all right.

Joyner hit a two-run homer to right in the fifth inning of Sunday’s 11-4 Angel victory over Boston at Anaheim Stadium. And he scored again in the sixth after he was intentionally walked to load the bases. Doug DeCinces followed with a grand slam.

Joyner now has seven home runs, just one below the torrid pace he set last year during his first-half rookie rampage. After 26 games last season, Joyner was hitting .324 with 19 RBIs.

He’s rebounded from the slow start to become second on the team to Brian Downing in RBIs with 23--which is second only to American League leader Cal Ripken, who has 27. Joyner leads the Angels in runs scored with 23. And his batting average is up to .307.

In the 14 games since that quiet Sunday, Joyner has 18 RBIs and the 7 home runs. A nice couple of weeks by anyone’s standards, even Joyner’s.

“All of life is learning from our experiences,” said Sutton, who stood at his locker watching Joyner smile into the television cameras. “There are very few geniuses who are born with all the answers.

“All that slump did was show Wally that he’s human. He got through it and now he’s getting on with it . . . well, ‘getting on with it’ doesn’t sum it up. He looks so good up there now.”

Yep, Joyner is swinging free and easy and flashing that boyish smile again. And, if perspective eluded him two weeks ago, he seems to have a firm grasp on it these days.

“I think I’ll be better equipped to handle a slump now that I’ve gotten some things under my belt . . . and up on the scoreboard again,” he said.

Joyner experienced a couple of slumps in the second half last year, but when your batting average is slipping from the mid-.320s to .300, it just doesn’t seem that bad.

“I’d never had an off-season before (he always played winter ball) and that was new to me,” Joyner said. “I tried to get it back too soon and it was very frustrating. Everything was moving at 100 miles per hour.

“I sat down with Gene and a couple of veteran players and talked it out. I got in some quality extra batting practice. And I tried to just let things happen. It was just a matter of slowing down and quit trying to create the future.”

Few young ballplayers have futures as potentially bright as Wally Joyner’s. But baseball is a game where the best hitters succeed only one-third of the time and Joyner knows there will be more slumps to come. Some will last longer than two weeks and you can bet the statistical effects of most will take longer than two weeks to overcome.

But Joyner says he’s ready to deal with the downside now.

“I couldn’t see it then, of course, but I think I’m a better ballplayer and a better person from having it happen to me,” he said.