Summary:
Score: White Sox 7 Detroit 5
Temperature: 74 o
Attendance: 40,187
Winner of the Dunkin' Donuts Race: Cuppie Coffee
I entered the park yesterday thinking about slumps. At first I was thinking about Cuppie Coffee's apparent slump. As we went through the gates, I told Dale "If Cuppie Coffee doesn't win tonight, I think they'll send her to the minor leagues for a while." I think my worries about Cuppie Coffee were, in fact, manifestations of the slumps I did not want to acknowledge namely my own creative slumps and the batting slump of My Favorite Player. When Cuppie Coffee emerged victorious before the bottom of the 4th inning, I hoped it was an omen for my player. Alas, the slump continued last night and I've found myself worrying about him today and hoping for the best for this afternoon's game. In part I'm worried about him being sent to the minor leagues (like Shelton) but, I also feel for him because I'm in my own much smaller, much less public slump of my own. To go back to a previous entry about the inevitable peaks and valleys of baseball and writing, I am grateful that no one knows how often I'm striking out when I sit down to write lately: thankfully no one pencils "3 pages of turgid prose" into a score card when I call it a day. Poor Curtis gets editorials written about him.
On the other hand, look at the diagnostic tools at his disposal: "Slaught has done his video and computer work on Granderson's swing and doesn't see anything glaring, fitting in with manager Jim Leyland's assessment that he's somehow swinging through good pitches he should hit. Slaught added, however, that Granderson has a lot of timing mechanisms in his swing that make it a complicated thing to pick apart. Any one of those could set his swing off too early or too late." On surface, baseball and writing are very different things but, actually, there may be some useful similarities to consider. As I think about my writing slump and Curtis's batting slump, I think perhaps I can glean something from empathizing with Curtis. Here's a section from an editorial on the Tigers' website: "Leyland believes, when he [CG] does get through it, he'll be a much better player for it in the long run. That's part of the reason why he'll keep running him out there, at least against right-handers. His only advice: Keep hacking." In another article, Leyland is quoted as saying: "I basically told him, 'I don't [care] if you strike out,'" Leyland said. "'Swing the bat. Don't worry about it. Swing it. Go up there, unbutton your collar and let it fly instead of trying to make sure everything's perfect. It's OK to make a mistake.'" I may not have video or computer work to analzye the timing of my faulty syntactical swings but I think Jim Leyland has offered the best advice a slumping writer (or batter) could hear: keep hacking and swing the bat.PS: Note about Game 12: it was an afternoon game and I had to work. Dale tells me Dashing Donut won. The Tigers did not. 10-0. Ouch.
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