Paul Daugherty

pdaugherty@enquirer.com

No matter how you look at it, you're still looking at the hotel ceiling at 4 in the morning. Memorizing it, actually, as you roll the bad at-bats around in your hitless and sleepless head. Baseball might not be a physical grind; it's a mental Everest. And there is no harder hike in all of sports than the hump traversed during a batting slump.

Ask Zack Cozart.

The Reds shortstop started the 2014 season 0-for-two-weeks. This is like getting on I-75 South in Florence and driving 100 miles before you realize that's not the way to Dayton. There's nothing you can do but try to make up for lost ground.

Cozart was hitless-for-22 before breaking through. After 14 games, he was hitting .095. He went two for his next 12 and actually increased his average 16 points. "When you start like that, you start chasing hits, Instead of worrying about a quality at-bat. All the sudden, you're chasing pitches out of the (strike) zone. Then it escalates,'' said Cozart.

Entering Thursday night's show versus Milwaukee, Cozart had hits in five of his previous 11 at-bats. Maybe the demons have been caged. Maybe they're simply avoiding the exorcism of a three-hit game.

Any rhyme or reason to a batting slump?

"Not at all,'' Cozart said. He was remarkably gracious for a guy who has spent a month lost on baseball's interstate. "Anybody in this room goes through it every year. At the end of the day, if you play 150 out of the 162, you're going to be the hitter you are.''

This is the preferred mantra for all hitters who slump, which is to say, all hitters. It is both the source of hope and madness: I've done this my entire life. I know how to do it. I will do it again. When will I do it again?

"It may start with bad luck,'' said Jay Bruce, who knows his way around a slump. "Then, it's mental. The people that control the mental part of the game the best are less fazed by it. Mentally, you can either prolong it or shorten it. It's hard on the mind.''

Slumping severely is unique to baseball. Peyton Manning doesn't slump. LeBron James slumps, but not for weeks on end. A running back slumps when his line stinks.

"No knock on other sports,'' said Cozart. "But putting the ball in the hoop is a little easier than hitting. If you're a running back, the hole is there or it's not.''

Baseball's everyday-ness lends itself to slumps, like no other game. When you're in a hitting ditch, there is no relaxing your way out of it. Only another day and another game, a new chance to conquer your terror, or watch it multiply like germs in a petri dish. It's all in what you tell yourself:

"I get to do this tomorrow!''

"I have to do this tomorrow?''

"You control so little,'' Bruce said. "You may be controlling everything you can, and still not be having success.

"Most of the time it's all mental,'' said Cozart, channeling his inner Yogi Berra. "There may be small (mechanical) things, but at the end of the day, if you're mentally right, then you don't even worry about mechanics.''

Cozart resorted to looking at his stats from early last year, when he slumped, too. He recalled a four-hit game against New York Mets phenom Matt Harvey, last May 22. "I took off the rest of the year. It just takes one day to get the confidence back,'' Cozart said. He started that day batting .206. He finished 2013 at .254. This is the thought he plants in his head while wearing holes in the hotel ceiling at 4:15 a.m.

"It's such a long year. If you worry about two weeks, you're going to have some problems mentally,'' said Cozart.

Bruce said slumps "begin and end with pitch selection. Maybe you just stand up there and be stubborn about the pitches you swing at.''

"Look at my first three weeks,'' Cozart said. "When I got a good pitch to hit, I hit it hard somewhere. When I swung at (bad) pitches, I was getting out. You know, I've been playing baseball since I was 6. I know I can hit. I know how to hit. I wish I could go back to that young mental state where I just hit.''

Cozart's slump will end. Maybe it already has. Eventually, the fog lifts atop Everest. Leaving a hitter only to wonder why it showed up in the first place.