Thousands of fans sitting and staring at one man up at the plate. All the attention focused on him while a single bead of sweat dripped off his forehead and onto home plate. Bright lights flash as the crowd erupts with cheering while the anticipation for the first pitch builds with every passing second. "The Slump," written by John Updike, accurately illustrates the pressure and excitement of being a professional baseball player and how discouraging it could be when one finds themself in a hitting slump. Through this short story the reader learns that there is no longer the excitement there once was as a young and talented player; instead, it has now turned into an unbearable pressure and panic to maintain being in top condition to play …show more content…
Updike decides to throw the reader right into the story plot with no previous background knowledge about baseball or what professionals typically go through. The story begins: "They say reflexes, the coach says reflexes, even the papers now are saying reflexes, but I don't think it's the reflexes so much..." (Updike 1). Through the specific choices he makes in regards to diction, the author is able to create a realistic understanding of the pressure from not only oneself but their coaches, families, and peers. The decision of including jargon includes the very vivid description words that create imagery for someone reading this selection (who may not possess much baseball knowledge). He implements baseball jargon, such as including DiMaggio, describing the field like an emerald, and expressing that the baseball still has the pitcher's thumbprints on it. All of these small details that would normally be missed in the game are taken notice of here in this work. This solidifies the idea that the player's mind quickly races due to the panic of being in a hitting slump, which sets the tone of anxiousness throughout the entire …show more content…
Updike dives into the idea and literary technique of creating a stream of consciousness that seems all over the place for the readers. He attempts to catch the thought process of someone who is stressed out and panicked and how their thoughts are no longer cohesive. The baseball player jumps from the thought of his wife timing his reflexes while wearing a gorilla mask, standing in the batter's box awaiting a pitch, driving to the stadium in a convertible, back to the idea of his wife and a kid playing catch, and finally to DiMaggio (someone who finally broke his hitting slump). All of these elements within this story combine to vividly illustrate the feelings that come along with pressure, stress, and panic. The player's thoughts are revealed when he exclaims, "They say I'm not hungry, but I still feel hungry, only now it's a kind of panic hungry, and that's not the right kind" (Updike 3). Through the random thoughts in no particular order, this creates a confusion within the story that may add a sense of stress for the readers in order to make the baseball player's panic more realistic and achievable for the audience to understand and sympathize for. In addition to the diction, the choice of the structure being set up in respect to the stream of consciousness provides the internal thoughts and
With today’s media coverage a wide array of outlets are covered, including sports. There are various amounts of sports television channels, websites and magazines all of which cover an abundance of sports. In baseball everything is broken down play by play and into statistical information. Two of the biggest outfielders in today’s game of baseball that draw an interesting comparison are Giancarlo Stanton of the Miami Marlins and Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees. Although they play for different teams in two different divisions I have discovered that they share their own similarities.
Most books about the minor league stick to what happens on the field and in the clubhouse. Gmelch takes us a step further from that environment by discussing his love for baseball as he grew up, women he loved and lost, personal decisions about his career, and his views on political and social aspects like Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement. Gmelch’s discussion of these topics is where the book thrives. He not only recalls them with the aid of diaries he kept during his playing days, but his style of writing makes you empathize with him. My heart broke for Gmelch as he recalled difficult breakups with his first girlfriend, but I howled with laughter when Gmelch talked about the jokes he and his teammates played on one another.
When Goodwin described the field at Fenway Park with the special ramp that she says “Ramp 33 is my ramp.” That particular quote, along with others, showed me as a reader how much passion she had for the sport. Through this essay
Interestingly with Riess ' experimental methodology, Crepeau creatively inspected the social pictures in mainstream periodical writing, predominantly The Sporting News, the so called "Authoritative manual for Baseball," to decide "what the general population associated with [major alliance baseball] saw as essential individual and national qualities, convictions, and qualities. " Reminiscent of the spearheading social investigations of Henry Nash Smith and John William Ward. Crepeau places players as images of the age and baseball editorial and reportage as articulations of the ethos of the times. His utilization of players as exemplification of society is both reminiscent and dubious, to mind the representation of baseball 's (and America 's) authoritative change through the persona of Babe Ruth, an epicurean maverick whose refusal "to be reshaped and get to be one of the faceless urban
Listening to the radio, I learned a home run followed the path of memories. I learned that home plate was the heart of the ball field and the farm house was the heart of the farm. I learned if you worked hard enough, nothing was unhittable not even Brown’s curveball. As long as you kept alert like a fox, you could survive the curves that the elements threw. I looked at Dzeidek with admiration because I knew he came to this country and put down roots as gnarled and swollen as his
Thousands of baseball fans and former players pack Yankees Stadium as they prepare to pay tribute to a Yankee legend. Perhaps the fans and players do not know it at the time, but they are about to witness history. In a short amount of time, they will hear one of the most memorable speeches in the history of all sports. The aroma of freshly cut grass fill the summer air as murmurs sweep through the anxious crowd.
In this film baseball is used as a way to help prisoners cope with daily and lifetimes of stress caused by incarceration in San Quentin Prison. This short
Then, there is alliteration in the poem to express the thrilling feeling of the game because of how the words flow so quickly. Moore writes on stanza five lines three through six, “Whitey's three kinds of pitch and pre-diagnosis with pick-off psychosis. Pitching is a large
This illustration similarly makes use of the notion of his fantasy materializing. He feels as though he is living in a fairytale now that his childhood ambition of becoming a baseball player has come true. Later in the story, when the tone changes from joy to disillusionment, we see a difference. In order to illustrate the disparity, Updike writes: "They no longer even attempt to turn the bends when it comes to me; they simply put it down the road.
The setting of the baseball field in “Sign for my Father who Stressed the Bunt” is revealing of important and major themes throughout the poem. By using words such as “rough” and “hand-cut” he establishes the setting of a rural baseball field where the majority of this poem takes place. Although time passes and the son gets older, the father still is trying and failing to teach his son to appreciate the bunt in the timeless “hand cut” baseball field. The son never seems to understand the father and his endless antics about the basics of bunting. The son comments, “I admired your style, but not enough to
They say hitting a baseball is one of the hardest and most calculated things to do in any sport, yet pros can get into a rhythm and hit the ball most of the time. According to the author John Updike reminisces about a time when he was in an audited slump. In addition, a slump in baseball conveys a drought, almost as if you are unable to hit the ball. Subsequently, the author proclaims that the coaches had blamed it on his reluctant reflexes, or that the papers say he isn't hungry anymore. But he knows this isn't the case, as he has proved these two possibilities wrong.
People only reflect on the past when they have a fire inside of them; otherwise, a shadow forms behind them. In John Updike's short story "The Slump," a man remembers his life before he began to feel trapped in a cycle while playing baseball. The man's life starts to unravel as a result of becoming so mentally disoriented. To help readers better understand the speaker's emotions and experiences, Updike uses a setting to illustrate the speaker's voice. Reflexes are first and foremost learned movements that are memorized over time.
For most of my childhood, the sport of baseball was the one activity I loved above anything else. Nothing could compare to the exhilarating freedom and satisfaction of bolting full speed around the bases, determined to steal 2nd, beating the "Throwdown" by a fraction of a second. The massive dust cloud kicked up by my cleats and the thunderous boom of the umpire shouting, "Safe!" made me feel empowered. It was in moments like those, when I was in control of my own fate, choosing whether to stay or to run, whether to play it safe or to risk failure, that I learned one of the most important lessons of my life.
Major League Baseball (MLB) is home to some of the world's most exceptional athletes, and identifying the top performers within this elite group is no easy task. However, based on their extraordinary skills, consistent achievements, and widespread acclaim, three players stand out as the pinnacle of excellence in the MLB. This essay explores the remarkable talents and accomplishments of Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, and Jacob deGrom, illustrating why they are widely regarded as the top three players in the league. First is Mike Trout, an outfielder for the Los Angeles Angels, is a prodigious talent who consistently astounds fans and analysts alike. Known for his incredible power, remarkable speed, and exceptional defensive abilities, Trout embodies the complete package.
Soon his team runs onto the field and begins to play. As a reader I felt that the imagery enhanced my experience, describing why the protagonist does these tasks. If the author had not used imagery like the baseball announcer approaching the protagonist or the description of the old fashioned uniform what Shoeless Joe was wearing, it would have been difficult to imagine the scenes. Since these scenes are the beginning of the story and are very important to the novel, the author used good words to make it visually