Slump

It is the most dreaded word in sports. Nobody knows why one starts or ends, but one thing is certain: It strikes without warning and plays no favorites.

By BRUCE LOWITT, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 2, 2002

[Times photo: Michael Rondou] Rays slugger Greg Vaughn entered Wednesday's game batting .099 but broke a 0-for-34 slump with a double, preserving a 0-for-36 skid in 1990 with the Brewers as the longest of his career.

Funny thing, a slump. It shows up unannounced and unwelcome, burrows into the mind and makes itself comfortable, and leaves the same way it arrived, quietly and on its own timetable. Sometimes its stay is easily forgotten; sometimes it's devastating.

"The best baseball saying I ever heard," Colorado Rockies manager Clint Hurdle said, "and it can apply to fielding, pitching or hitting, is there are two kinds of people that play this game: those that are humble, and those that are about to be."

Probably every athlete, manager, coach and team has experienced a brutal stretch. The Yankees finished no higher than fifth from 1965-69. Gene Mauch managed the 1964 Phillies out of the National League pennant. John McKay coached the Bucs through the worst start in NFL history.

Some of the best of all times have had the worst of times, relatively speaking. All-time home run champion Hank Aaron went through a slump. So did Laffit Pincay and Andre Agassi. So did Tiger Woods.

So what Rays designated ... uh ... hitter Greg Vaughn was going through, hitless in 34 at-bats before a double Wednesday, is not that unusual. Not even for Vaughn. He went through an 0-for-36 stretch with the 1990 Milwaukee Brewers.

Okay, maybe Woods didn't go through what most pro golfers would call a slump, but he is held to a different standard. After winning the 2001 Masters he failed to finish in the top 10 in five consecutive tournaments. To Tiger, that's a tailspin. "It's part of playing sports," he said then. "You can't have everything going your way all the time."

Aaron averaged 40 home runs a year from 1959-63. In 1964 he "slumped" to 24, then averaged 39 from 1965-71. Pincay, one of thoroughbred racing's greatest jockeys, was 0-for-10 in Kentucky Derby rides until Swale won in 1984.

Agassi, one of tennis' most dominating players in the mid 1990s, crashed to a No. 141 ranking in 1997 when he failed to win a tournament. Two years later he won the U.S. and French opens and was ranked No. 1. Mark McGwire slumped throughout 1991, hitting .201 with 22 home runs.

Mets pitcher Anthony Young went through a spectacular slump. After winning four of his first nine decisions he went on a 27-game losing streak in 1992-93. Ending it, he said, was "almost like winning the World Series." Young wasn't really that bad, just mediocre. He went 4-6, 3-4 and 3-3 his next (and final) three seasons.

Twins pitcher Terry Felton lost 16 in a row. Normally that would be a slump, but they also were his only major-league decisions. Similarly, Chip Beck, winless in his past 233 PGA Tour matches since winning in 1992, isn't in a slump. He's in his career.

If some players seem to rise, even momentarily, to the occasion (Rays coach Billy Hatcher's .750 batting average for Cincinnati in the 1990 World Series), some seem to save their worst for last. Gil Hodges batted .254 with 32 homers for Brooklyn in 1952, then went 0-for-21 in the World Series. The next season he hit .302 with 31 home runs, and .364 with a homer in the World Series.

The Bucs? Like Felton and Beck, they had no place from which to drop, losing their first 26 before beating the Saints and Cardinals in the final two games of 1977 (which, incidentally, cost coaches Hank Stram and Don Coryell their jobs). The Mets were a horrendous 40-120 in 1962, their first season, but even they had a slump during it, losing 17 in a row in one stretch.

The 1961 Phillies lost 23 in a row. Like the '62 Mets they were a last-place club. Their more serious slump came in 1964 when Mauch wore down Jim Bunning and Chris Short, pitching them on two days' rest as the Phillies approached the stretch drive. Their 10-game slide with 12 to play cost them a 6 1/2-game lead and the pennant.

Similarly, the 1978 Red Sox blew a 141/2-game mid-July lead over New York, losing 14 of 17 in one September stretch and losing to Bucky Dent and the Yankees in a one-game playoff. And the '51 Brooklyn Dodgers blew a 13 1/2-game mid-August lead and lost their one-game playoff to Bobby Thomson and the Giants.

"We went into a slump as a team, and we just couldn't snap out of it," said Don Zimmer, manager of the '78 Red Sox. "And when you're in something like that, you just don't know when it's going to end. You come out and take all the extra hitting you want, you change the lineups; nothing seems to work. If anybody ever had the answer for a slump, there'd never be a slump."

Former Rays third baseman and coach Wade Boggs, a five-time American League batting champion with Boston, explained the evolution of a slump.

"Say you face Kevin Brown one night, Randy Johnson the next and Pedro Martinez the next," he said. "Now you're 0-12 without making solid contact and starting to worry. Then you face a guy you should hit and don't, and that's when it starts to snowball and you create the problem. It starts out physical and ends up mental.

"You see guys in a slump. They're way out in front of breaking balls and fouling off fastballs. They're shaking their heads, slamming down their helmets, throwing their bats. It's obvious they've lost their concentration. A young player's worried about being sent down. An older player's worried about being benched or cut. A guy in a slump is worried about so many things, the one thing he should be focused on -- hitting a baseball -- has gone completely out the window."

Players will do anything to break out of a slump if working on their mechanics doesn't seem to do the trick. They'll put uniforms on in a different order, change their socks and underwear (as opposed those on hot streaks who don't), start eating different pregame meals, or eating pregame meals differently ...

When the Pirates were in a hitting slump in the 1970s, pitcher Dock Ellis set the team's bats on fire. "We're not using them, anyway," he said.

And when the late Bill Rigney was managing the Angels, his No. 3 hitter, Jim Fregosi, went 0-for-April. Rather than bench him, Rigney made him his leadoff hitter. Fregosi, surprised when he saw the lineup card, asked Rigney what he was doing.

"I just want to get you the hell out of the way," Rigney said.

Fregosi went 3-for-5.

-- Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report, which contains information from other news organizations.

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