Hunger Pangs at the Plate : Accursed Slump the Bane of Many a Batter

Slump. It’s a word with which no one wants to be associated, one that carries the stigma of sub-par performance. Would Donald Trump have amassed his great wealth if his name were Donald Slump?

Many top major league hitters refuse to utter the word, as if acknowledging the existence of a slump will bring one on.

Said Wade Boggs of the Boston Red Sox: “I never get to that point. I call it a readjustment period.”

Said Tony Gwynn of the San Diego Padres: “Before it gets bad, I bounce out of it. Always have.”

Of course, that’s easy for them to say. Every pitch that wanders within whacking distance of Boggs or Gwynn must look like a slowly drifting balloon attached to a streamer that reads, “HIT ME.” Boggs’ lifetime batting average is .352. Gwynn’s is .332.

Try telling Jeff Bishop of Antelope Valley High that a slump is nothing but a bogyman, a “statistically acceptable variation” as Dave Winfield of the New York Yankees describes it.

Bishop, a senior three-year starter who batted .370 last year and .395 as a sophomore, didn’t pull his average over .200 until a recent seven-for-16 surge.

“It was definitely a slump, and it was no fun at all,” Bishop said.

That about sums up the sentiment of a handful of area players for whom a portion of the season has been one long slump.

Many, such as Bishop, are prominent names and entered the season with lofty expectations. Among this group are Cleveland’s Pat Bryant, Hart’s Lance Migita, Simi Valley’s Jeff Sommer, Thousand Oaks’ Scott Barkman and Westlake’s Todd Preston.

“I was expecting to come out of the chute real strong, and I didn’t. I considered it a slump,” said Migita, a senior who batted .437 last season but was mired around .220 midway through this season.

Gifted hitters struggle for numerous reasons. Rarely, coaches say, are the problems physical. “The mental part of a slump is the biggest obstacle,” Taft Coach Rich McKeon said.

Bryant is considered the top outfield prospect in the area, and playing under a microscope has affected his concentration. “Scouts are there drooling every day and the pressure is great,” said Rich Raymond, Cleveland’s coach. “Also, we’re a young team and in the back of his mind he thinks that if he’s not going to do it, we’re not going to do it.”

Preston, conversely, believes that he suffers from being surrounded by Westlake’s successful hitters, among them Mike Lieberthal, rated by Baseball America magazine as the No. 3 high school prospect in the nation.

“I want to keep up with the rest of the guys in the lineup and I’ve been overswinging, not staying within myself,” Preston said.

Barkman, who batted .365 last season while playing first base and right field, is Thousand Oaks’ only senior pitcher this year. He has thrown well, posting a 4-2 record with 48 strikeouts in 37 1/3 innings. But he is batting only .216.

“Last year I took about 200 swings a day. I have a batting tee in my room and I’d hit into a bunch of pillows every night,” he said. “This year, I spend that time on pitching drills. I take maybe 20 swings a day.”

The importance of practice has not been lost on Sommer, a three-year starter at Simi Valley who has 15 career home runs. After striking out twice in a recent game, Sommer was pulled from the lineup. Rather than sulk, he picked up a bat the following weekend.

“I figure I’m not going to get better sitting around,” he said. “I just kept thinking about it, so I called my neighbor and he pitched batting practice to me all Sunday morning.”

Occasionally, something unrelated to baseball is carried to the plate. Bishop was a close friend of Christopher Sanford, the Antelope Valley soccer goalie who was slain in a gang-related shooting in January.

“Chris has been on my mind a lot,” Bishop said. “I put myself in his situation, not being able to finish what he wanted to do, and I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself because of it.”

Bishop hit his first home run of the season April 17 and presented the ball to Sanford’s parents.

“I’m getting back to being myself,” he said. “I’m going to the plate like I used to, saying, ‘I am the dominator.’ ”

Because a high school baseball schedule consists of only 20 to 25 games, an anemic batting average can become healthy with only a couple of weeks of frequent shots. Bryant was six for 10 the past two weeks to raise his average from .276 to .359. Preston snapped an 0-for-17 slump last Wednesday with a game-winning single. Migita is up to .394.

However, the short season can begin and end with a slump that a major league batter would dismiss as unavoidable over a 162-game schedule.

A high school player batting .320 with 50 at-bats sees his average plummet to .229 after an 0-for-20 slump. The average of a major leaguer batting .320 with 500 at-bats dips only to .308 after the same 0-for-20.

“A high school kid is apt to panic because he’s watching his season go down the tubes,” said Steve Marden, coach at San Fernando.

A hitter cannot consciously avoid a slump, which adds to the frustration. It’s not like a hole in the ground, somewhere only a fool would fall. In fact, a slump can begin with line drives.

“Baseball is strange in that you can be successful--hit the ball hard--and make an out,” said Rich Herrera, Westlake’s coach. “And you can be unsuccessful--hit the ball weakly--and get a hit. Sometimes a slump starts when a guy doesn’t understand that.”

Like a virus, a slump often has an inalterable life cycle. Once mired, a batter often becomes impatient and swings at bad pitches.

“A kid has problems, things go on in his head and he starts to press,” Marden said. “Because he’s lost his concentration, the lack of success continues. The next step is changing his stance and swing. The problem could have been mental to start with, but now you have real problems.”

Next comes self-doubt. A player’s attitude slumps under the weight of the slump. He feels as though John Candy is taking a joy ride on his shoulders.

“When I was slumping and it was my turn to bat, in the back of my mind I’m thinking, ‘Here we go again,’ ” said Hart’s Migita.

Soon, the hitter is bombarded with advice from well-meaning friends and parents. Much of it still rings in the ears of Ryan McGuire, a highly regarded El Camino Real player who began last season one for 15.

“Open my stance, close my stance, elbow up, elbow down, look for this, look for that . . .,” McGuire said. “In practice I’d try a few things, but in games I was skeptical of schools of hitting I hadn’t tried.”

As a slump continues frustration builds. A high school player isn’t afforded time-honored major league means of blowing off steam. He’ll be tossed out of the game if he throws a helmet. There are no water coolers to smash.

“He can’t please everybody, so he ends up not pleasing anybody, beginning with himself,” said Mike Maio, El Camino Real’s coach. “Hitting is a fine art and it’s easy to over-analyze. I call it paralysis by analysis.”

At this point a coach can help, and not necessarily by tinkering with a hitter’s mechanics. Mike Van Cheri, Antelope Valley’s coach, used a few key words to boost Bishop. Words like enjoyment and relaxation.

“Once we determined it was a mental thing, I reassured him and reminded him to have fun playing this game,” Van Cheri said. “I wanted him to know my confidence in him had not wavered.”

There is no sure-fire remedy for a slump. Methods range from the rational to the supernatural.

Members of the Woodland Hills West American Legion team resorted to a pseudo-seance last summer to help the team snap out of a slump.

“We stood in a circle with our bats between our legs and held hands,” recalled McGuire, a member of the team. “We took turns saying prayers and rubbed this plastic dog bone on the bats.”

Something that silly couldn’t really work. Or could it? Woodland Hills scored 42 runs in its next three games and didn’t stop hitting until it had won the American Legion World Series championship.

Simi Valley’s Sommer took a more studious approach. “I’ve been watching a lot of pro players on TV to see what they do and what their attitudes are,” he said.

Major leaguers might not be the best examples when it comes to methods of ending slumps, however.

When Cincinnati Reds shortstop Dave Concepcion was slumping in 1976, he jokingly crawled into a clothes dryer in the team’s dressing room, saying: “Maybe this will get me hot.” Someone started the dryer and Concepcion went for a spin. That day, he got multiple hits.

Former Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Richie Ashburn once took his bat to bed with him. “I wanted to know my bat a little better, and it me,” he explained.

An unwavering belief in their own ability will end a slump for most hitters. Perseverance eventually produces hits.

“I knew that no matter what happened, I was gonna burst out of it. I never said, ‘I can’t do it any more,’ ” said Bishop, the Antelope Valley player.

Refusing to acknowledge slumps might have merit too. Major league hitters other than Boggs and Gwynn belong to that camp.

“I don’t believe in slumps, because once you admit to a problem like that you’ve got something extra to deal with,” Ken Griffey of the Reds said.

Marden, the San Fernando coach, knows that slumps exist. But he didn’t want the term tossed around within earshot of John Najar, the team’s best power hitter. Najar was slumping recently when Marden was asked for the player’s phone number.

“Here’s the number,” he said, “but do me a favor and don’t mention the word ‘slump.’ ”