Baseball

In the game of baseball, batting slumps are one of a player's worst nightmares. When they are doing well, players attribute their successes to mysterious minor occurrences around them that then become habits' the players keep up. After a game in which one baseball player who was wearing an old helmet with it's side dented hit two triple's, a home run, and a single, the player continued to wear that helmet for the rest of the season. Warding off evil spirits through superstitions is another thing baseball player's do. One player always wears the green T-shirt from his university under his teams' jersey. Another won't wear a jersey with any 6s in his player's number. Batting coaches spend hours watching videotapes with slumping players, trying to find what's causing the problem. They examine the players batting stance or swing, but this doesn't always provide useful clues. Some slumps happen when batters begin to worry too much about their misses and about everyone else's successes. But one coach thinks otherwise. He notes that some players' start making adjustments when they've hit a double and want to hit farther or when a certain unusual pitch connected well with their bats. Players in their 30s' complain of a different kind of slump. One bad day, says one over-30 player, may mean he is losing it, that his age has begun to take its toll. A hitter who is hot, on the other hand, tends to get possessive about a special bat and uses it until it breaks or its' cracks begin to show. When that bat goes, the player sometimes loses confidence until he connects with a new bat that brings him a few homerun's. A batters life isn't as easy as some people think it is.

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