When "The Slump" begins, its narrator, a professional baseball player, has already been experiencing trouble with his hitting. The opening line goes right past the subject of a batting slump, leaving readers to understand the subject matter from the story's title, and starts immediately with guesses about what might be causing the problem. The first topic that the narrator suggests is "reflexes," which his coach and the press assume to be causing his problem. He explains that he does not think it is caused by reflexes, though. As evidence for why he discounts this theory, he explains that the night before his wife surprised him in their bedroom with a rubber gorilla mask and he jumped under the bed in less than a second—she had a stopwatch ready and timed his reaction.

He remembers how easy it used to be for him to hit before...