MYTH: A bloop hit gets a batter out of his slump.

Reminder: this is a continuation of my on-again, off-again series that will attempt to dispel baseball’s myths and other slices of Boar’s Head bologna.

For the love of Pope Benedict, can we please stop saying that if a batter is 0-for-39 in his last 11 games and then gets an infield single, “That was all he needed to get back on track?” This is a case of announcers speaking out loud just for the sake of making sure their microphone works. It’s such Oscar Meyer. I can remember so many times where a batter in the middle of a wretched slump got a Baltimore chop single and then proceded to slump for like two more weeks. I’ve even seen guys hit a few homers in the middle of a horrible slump: it means that every Golden Retriever can have his day. A full-season batting average is an AVERAGE, and one hit – or one game for that matter – does not constitute a slump or the breaking out of one.

And I know this blog is supposed to be about baseball only, but are you too getting sick and tired of hearing basketball announcers say, “Even though he’s missed 17 three-pointers in a row, all he needs to do is make a layup and see what it looks like for the ball to go into the basket, and then he’ll start getting hot?” Are you serious? Is this really what you think is going to happen? I remember hearing this argument after John Starks made a layup during game 7 of the 1994 NBA Finals, a game the Knicks lost largely because Starks shot 2-for-18 from the field. I guess Starks was closing his eyes for the layup, and didn’t see what it looked like for the ball to go into the basket.