Summary

Barry Bonds before steroids Barry Bonds after steroids

The Slump is told from the viewpoint of a struggling baseball player who seemingly has been unable to obtain a successful hit. The narrator begins by saying how most are attributing his inability to hit the ball to reflexes, but the narrator thinks otherwise, and instead says that the problem is that he cannot see the ball the way he used to. He vividly describes how before he could sense the many things occuring between the wind-up of a pitch to the hit itself, and how now it seems to have an invisible barrier (the Van Ellen belt, he calls it) around it that distorts his ability to hit it correctly.

After describing this phenomenom, he describes how he used to arrive to games. He says that before, he would be listening to music on his way to the stadium, but as soon as he arrived, he would stop listening to it. He describes that when he saw the children gather around him, he would become very nervous and how he thought that the chauffeur was stealing his car when in actuallity he was just doing his job, and the sense of amazement and overwhelment he felt when true baseball players that were immortalized in trading cards knew his name. Now, he says that he still listens to the music even after pulling into stadiums, how the children don't frighten him anymore and how he just feels more at ease now. He says that he does outstanding in the batting cage, but when in an actual game, he seems to lose everything.

Following this, the narrator speaks about how many think that he lacks the hunger and how he feels he still has the hunger, but it seems to have changed to sort of panicky-state of hunger, comparing it to a young child about to catch a fly-ball but near the end closes his eyes and misses it. He also considers getting pegged in the head, using Joe DiMaggio as the reason to break his slump. He ends by talking about how the pitchers and catchers seemingly mock him by throwing every pitch down the middle of the strike zone and how it seems that no matter what he does to get out of the slump, it doesn't seem to be enough.