swing

President Obama is running statistically even with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 12 key swing states and is slightly ahead of Texas Gov. Rick Perry and businessman Herman Cain, according to the USA Today/Gallup poll released Friday.

The poll, which looks at both national trends and at the races in what everyone considers to be the 12 battleground states that will likely determine the 2012 election, paints a picture of Obama facing a tougher road to reelection than an incumbent should.

But the president, a Democrat whose approval rating has been in the low 40-percent range in recent months, can take heart from the poll’s findings that he is running better against specific Republican candidates than he does against a generic Republican, indicating that when faced with a real choice, voters seem to prefer Obama to Romney, Perry or Cain.

According to the poll, Obama is tied among national voters with Romney at 47% and leads Perry 49% to 45%. In its first measurement of Cain, the poll found Obama ahead 48% to 46%. The poll was taken before reports surfaced that two women received financial settlements after complaining that Cain had sexually harassed them.

But overall, the results show all three GOP candidates running strongly against Obama. The national results are based on interviews with 1,056 adults taken Oct. 26-27; the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

But the American electoral system is based on indirect representation rather than direct democracy. The Founding Fathers feared the unmediated passions of the mob and wanted to ensure that wiser heads would have a greater role. Hence the creation of the presidential electors who actually vote for president based on the popular vote in their home states.

Because of the electoral college, where a candidate’s support exists is often more important than just how many people back him or her. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win, and in 2012, Obama can pretty much count on winning enough states to give him about 196 electoral votes, while the GOP candidate starts with about 191. In the center are 12 states, worth 151 electoral votes for which both parties will spend most of their money and resources fighting. Those states, all won by Obama in 2008, are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

According to the poll, Romney is at 47% to Obama’s 46% in those 12 states. Obama does better against Perry, 49% to 44% and Cain, 48% to 45%. Those results are based on interviews with 1,334 adults, from Oct. 20 to 27. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

The polls generally show that the presidential race is extremely competitive at this point, a year before Election Day and two months before the GOP begins voting for its presidential candidate. But Republicans also have an advantage in the enthusiasm arena, according to the poll.

Overall, 47% of swing-state registered voters and 48% of all U.S. registered voters said they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting. But Republicans were more eager both nationally and in the swing states. Nationally, Republicans were ahead 56% to 48% over Democrats. In the swing states, the GOP was ahead in the enthusiasm race 59% to 48%.

Two days ago, Shohei Ohtani rolled into Dodger Stadium as a man on a mission.

After struggling for the previous couple weeks — mired in a postseason slump that had raised questions about everything from his out-of-sync swing mechanics to the physical toll of his two-way duties — the soon-to-be four-time MVP decided it was time to change something up.

Over the previous seven games, going back to the start of the National League Division Series, the $700-million man had looked nothing like himself. Ohtani had two hits in 25 at-bats. He’d recorded 12 strikeouts and plenty more puzzling swing decisions. And he seemed, in the estimation of some around the team, unusually perturbed as public criticisms of his play started to mount.

So, during the team’s off-day workout Wednesday at Dodger Stadium, ahead of Game 3 of the NL Championship Series, Ohtani informed the club’s hitting coaches he wanted to take batting practice on the field.

It was a change from his normal routine — and signaled his growing urgency to get back on track.

“If this was a regular-season situation and you’re looking at an expanse of small sample — eight, nine games, whatever it might be — he probably wouldn’t be out on the field,” manager Dave Roberts said later.

But “with the urgency [of] the postseason,” the manager continued, Ohtani “wanted to make an adjustment on his own.”

Whatever Ohtani found that day, evidently (and resoundingly) clicked. He led off Game 3 with a triple. He entered Game 4 looking more comfortable with his swing. And then, in one of the incredible individual displays ever witnessed in playoff history, he lifted the Dodgers straight into the World Series.

In a 5-1 defeat of the Milwaukee Brewers that completed an NLCS sweep and gave the Dodgers their 26th pennant in franchise history, Ohtani hit three home runs as a hitter, and struck out 10 batters over six-plus scoreless innings as a pitcher.

Shohei Ohtani pitches during Game 4 of the NLCS against the Brewers. Ohtani struck out 10 over six scoreless innings for the Dodgers.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

He made his previously disappointing playoffs a suddenly forgotten memory, earning NLCS MVP honors and to the astonished amazement of all 52,883 in attendance.

And he delivered the kind of game the baseball world dreamed about when the two-way phenom first arrived from Japan, fulfilling the prophecy that accompanied him as a near-mythical prospect eight years earlier.

Back then, Ohtani’s 100-mph fastball and wicked off-speed repertoire had tantalized evaluators. His majestic left-handed swing had tortured pitchers in his home country.

Not since Babe Ruth had the sport seen anything like him.

There were some early growing pains (and injuries) during his transition to the majors. But over the last five years, he blossomed in the game’s definitive face.

A look at the three home runs Shohei Ohtani hit in Game 4 of the NLCS on Friday.

All that had been missing, in a resume chock full of MVPs and All-Star selections and unthinkable records even “The Great Bambino” never produced, was a signature performance in October. A game in which he dominated on the mound, thrilled at the plate, and single-handedly transformed a game on the sport’s biggest stage.

During that Wednesday workout this week, Ohtani got himself ready for one, stepping into the cage during his on-field batting practice — as his walk-up song played through the stadium speakers and teammates gathered near the dugout in curious anticipation — and swatting one home run after another, including one that soared to the roof of the right-field pavilion.

On Friday, in an almost unimaginable showcase of his unprecedented talents, he managed to do exactly the same thing.

After stranding a leadoff walk in the top of the first with three-straight strikeouts, Ohtani switched from pitcher to hitter and unleashed a hellacious swing. Brewers starter José Quintana left him an inside slurve. Ohtani turned it into the first leadoff home run ever by a pitcher (in the regular season or playoffs). The ball traveled 446 feet. It landed high up the right-field stands.

Three more scoreless innings of pitching work later, Ohtani came back to the plate and hit his second home run of the night even farther. In a swing almost identical to his titanic BP drive two days prior, he launched a ball that darn near clipped the pavilion roof again, a 469-foot moonshot that landed in the concourse above the seats in right.

Somehow, there was still plenty more to come.

With the Dodgers up 4-0 at that point, Ohtani then did his best work as a pitcher, following up two strikeouts that stranded a leadoff double in the fourth — and had him excitedly fist-pumping off the mound — with two more in both the fifth and the sixth.

His fastball was humming up to triple-digits. His sweeper and cutter were keeping the Brewers off balance. His splitter wasn’t touched once any of the five times they tried to swing at it.

Shohei Ohtani runs the bases after hitting his third home run of the game against the Brewers in Game 4 of the NLCS at Dodger Stadium on Friday night.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Anything he did immediately became magic.

Ohtani’s loudest roar came in the bottom of the seventh, after his pitching start had ended on a walk and a single led off the top half of the inning.

For the third time, he flung his bat at a pitch over the plate. He sent a fly ball sailing deep in a mild autumn night. He rounded the bases as landed beyond the center field fence.

Three home runs. Six immaculate innings. A tour de force that sent the Dodgers to the World Series.

All of it, just two days removed from Ohtani being seemingly at his lowest.

All of it, when the baseball world was most closely watching.

Dodgers players and coaches celebrate after sweeping the Milwaukee Brewers in the NLCS at Dodger Stadium on Friday night.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

To Andrew Friedman, something like this was a virtual impossibility.

“If you had said that we would have a six-week stretch where our offense would rank 30th in baseball, I would have said there was a zero percent chance,” the Dodgers president of baseball operations said last month.

“I would have been wrong,” he quickly added.

Over a five-week stretch from July 4 to Aug. 4, the Dodgers inexplicably ranked 30th (out of 30 clubs) in scoring. And though they’ve been slightly better in the five weeks since, questions about their supposed juggernaut lineup still abound.

In the first half of the season, the Dodgers boasted the best offense in the majors, leading the majors in scoring (5.61 runs per game), batting average (.262), OPS (.796) and hitting with runners in scoring position (.300) and went 56-32 over their first 88 games.

Since then, however, everything has flipped.

It started with a July slump that was as stunning as it was unforeseen, with the Dodgers averaging just 3.36 runs in a 25-game stretch commencing with Independence Day. Since then, there have been only marginal improvements, with the Dodgers entering Friday ranked 24th in scoring (4.21 runs per game), 25th in batting average (.237), 18th in OPS (.718) and 22nd in hitting with runners in scoring position (.245) over their last 58 games — a stretch in which they’ve gone 26-32.

“Not scoring runs,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said last week, “it’s just not who we are.”

On the surface, the root causes seemed rather obvious. Much of their lineup was either on the injured list or scuffling in the wake of previous, nagging injuries. Healthy superstars were grinding through flaws with their swings. What little depth they had failed to compensate.

To that end, the team is hopeful it has turned the page.

Shohei Ohtani, after a midseason lull, is back to his MVP-caliber norms. Mookie Betts is back to looking like himself at the end of an otherwise career-worst season. Max Muncy and Tommy Edman have returned from injuries, providing the batting order with much-needed length. Significant playing time is no longer going to the likes of Buddy Kennedy, Alex Freeland, Estuery Ruiz or any of the other anonymous faces that populated the clubhouse during the campaign’s darkest days.

“Our lineup, our team, looks more whole,” manager Dave Roberts said this week. “I think that we’ve all been waiting for our guys to come back to health, and see what we look like as the ballclub that we had all envisioned.”

Still, when asked whether the Dodgers’ second-half slump could just be pinned on personnel issues, Roberts and his players said it wasn’t that simple.

The Dodgers might not have been whole. But they weren’t doing fundamental things — like stressing opposing pitchers, driving up pitch counts, or executing in leverage situations — either.

“We’d lost sight of playing the game the way we’re capable of playing,” Roberts acknowledged.

“For a little while,” Betts added, “we were having just some bad at-bats.”

This is the dynamic the Dodgers have honed in on fixing, hoping to turn their summer-long frustrations into a valuable learning experience as October nears.

In recent days, a renewed and deliberate emphasis has been placed on the importance of competitiveness at the plate. Daily hitters’ meetings have included film sessions reviewing situational at-bats from the previous night. In-game dugout conversations have centered on a more basic message.

“It’s more about your approach, your plan,” Freeman said. “That’s been the focus.”

This week, the team took what it hopes are important first steps, ambushing the Rockies with seven- and nine-run performances in which they advanced baserunners, capitalized on scoring opportunities and built the kind of big innings that been missing over the two months beforehand.

“We said a few games ago, ‘This needs to be like how we focus for the playoffs,’” Freeman said. “Focus on the little things that help win games.”

The Dodgers, of course, have seen what a broken offense looks like before.

And they know what happens when it doesn’t get rectified before the playoffs.

Late in 2022, as co-hitting coach Aaron Bates recalled this week, the team slipped into bad habits while nursing a massive National League West lead: “It felt like that whole month of September was swing camp, or spring training,” he said, “in the sense of guys working on their swings individually too much, as opposed to playing the game in front of them.”

The results then were costly: A four-game NL Division Series elimination to the San Diego Padres in which the Dodgers repeatedly failed with runners in scoring position.

The next year was more of the same: The team losing its identity while coasting down the stretch, before being swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks in three listless games.

Last season, the Dodgers finally avoided such pitfalls. They batted .278 with runners in scoring position during their postseason run to the World Series. Their tying and go-ahead runs in the Fall Classic clincher came on a pair of productive at-bats in the form of sacrifice flies.

The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani has showed his MVP form in recent games, homering twice in last Sunday’s win against the Baltimore Orioles.

(Eric Thayer / For The Los Angeles Times)

But this summer, after a first-half outburst that met every lofty expectation of their $400 million roster, more troubling patterns began to resurface again.

Betts’ slow start devolved into a career-worst slump, bottoming out with a .205 average during July. Freeman began to fade right alongside him, with his .374 season average at the end of May plummeting to .292 less than two months later. Edman and Teoscar Hernández struggled after returning from first-half injuries. Michael Conforto never found his footing while Andy Pages endured an extended sophomore slide.

When coupled with Muncy’s prolonged absence — he missed 48 of 56 games because of a knee injury and oblique strain — the Dodgers suddenly had a lineup of players either grinding to rediscover their swing, or struggling to make up for the firepower they were missing.

And as easy scoring dried up, their inability to work consistent “team at-bats” quickly became magnified.

“It happened incrementally, every day, little by little,” Bates said. “Where it’s like, you’re a little off, you want to see what’s wrong with your swing, and you don’t realize that it snowballs. Before you know it, you’re thinking so much about your swing, you’re off of the situations out there.”

It was a problem, Bates insisted, borne of good intentions. Most of the roster was battling swing flaws. Too much daily energy was spent on players trying to individually get their mechanics right.

It led to mindless swings were wasted on bad pitches. It caused scoring opportunities to carelessly, and repeatedly, go frustatingly by the wayside.

“Guys just got so internal with their mechanics,” Bates said, “they weren’t able to shift their focus once the game starts to just competing in the box.”

Bates started sensing the trend while watching the team from afar, gaining a different perspective during a two-week medical absence in early August to address blood clots in his leg.

In the clubhouse, players began voicing similar observations after particularly puzzling offensive performances in recent weeks.

“I feel like a lot of swings that we took today weren’t really good swings to get on base,” veteran infielder Miguel Rojas said after the Dodgers managed only one hit in six innings against Padres left-hander Nestor Cortes on Aug. 23. “We know we’re more than capable of putting up better at-bats and more hits together to create some traffic.”

“We individually are trying to find ways on our own to make sure that we’re just hitting better than we are,” Ohtani echoed, through an interpreter, after the Dodgers’ one-run performance in a series-opener in Baltimore last weekend. “But I think the side effect of that is, we’re a little too eager, and putting too much pressure on ourselves.”

Thus, this week, the team endeavored to make changes.

In their daily pregame hitters’ meetings, the club has started holding what fellow co-hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc described to SportsNet LA as “NFL-style” film sessions; in which players were asked to review situational at-bats from the night before, and analyze their ability to execute their plan of attack.

“The game rewards you for having those ‘team at-bats,’” Bates said. “So you just preach to them by holding each other accountable, talking about them after the fact, not shying away from it.”

Freeman added that, in the dugout, players have also made an effort to emphasize that message among themselves.

“Don’t get upset because your swing didn’t feel good,” he said. “Like, if you go 0-for-four but move a runner over four times, that’s a great game for us. It might not be for your stats. But you gotta throw that out the window. That’s what we’ve been trying to clean up.”

The hope is that this renewed focus will naturally help hitters sync-up their swings.

On Monday night, for example, Betts moved a runner to third base with a fly ball in the sixth inning, before coming back to the plate and roping a tie-breaking two-run single with two outs in the eighth.

“He said it in the hitter’s meeting [the next day],” Freeman relayed, “how that little positive thing of moving [a runner] over helped him build confidence going into his next at-bat.”

Little moments like that, the Dodgers hope, will help kick-start their offense as they come up on the playoffs. They might not have been able to envision the struggles of the last two months. But now, between better health and improving at-bat quality, they finally see a way to fix their ailing offense.

“Now, we’re at least having good at-bats, getting a walk, extending innings, finding ways to manufacture runs,” Betts said.

“I do think that presently, the guys are engaged,” Roberts added. “Guys are playing as one right now.”

PITTSBURGH — It was not quite a benching. But it served as a reminder nonetheless.

Last year, in many ways, Teoscar Hernández was the heart and soul of the Dodgers. Not their best player. Nor their biggest star. But someone who provided effervescent vibes in the clubhouse, veteran leadership in the dugout and clutch hits in several of the season’s biggest moments at the plate.

“Teo is a guy that we counted on a lot last year,” manager Dave Roberts said. “He’s a guy that I really admire, because he can balance the fun part of baseball but also have that edge.”

This year, however, frustration has doused much of the fun. Struggles have dulled his usual edge.

Between injuries, slumps, defensive miscues and mechanical swing flaws, Hernández has endured one of his worst career seasons. He is batting just .247, his lowest since 2019. He has a .734 OPS, the lowest of his career and just a smidge above league-average. His limited range in right field has led to a flurry of dropped balls and some of the poorest defensive metrics of any big leaguer at the position. And going back to the last week of June, no other Dodger player (not even Michael Conforto) has been worth fewer wins above replacement than Hernández’s negative-0.5 mark, according to Fangraphs.

“For me, not being the same as last year is a little frustrating,” Hernández said. “I don’t want to be like that. I want to be better than last year. But it’s baseball. It’s life. You just have to keep working, keep trusting in yourself and the things that you can do to help the team.”

Last weekend, however, Roberts had a different idea. In the midst of Hernández’s latest cold spell, the outfielder was unexpectedly benched for Sunday’s series finale against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

“He’s an every-day guy,” Roberts said that day. “But I do think that where we’re at, you’ve got to perform, too, to warrant being out there every single day.”

The move wasn’t punitive, with Roberts also accounting for Monday’s off day in hopes “a two-day reset could help” the two-time All-Star.

But still, with the stretch run of the season nearing, the manager was dropping a hint to his star slugger as well.

“I think we’ve lost a little bit of that edge over the last couple months,” Roberts said Tuesday of Hernández, having had “numerous conversations” to communicate the same message with him personally.

“For me, I want to see that edge, that fight, that fire, and I’ll bet on any result. I just want to see that. We’re past the mechanical part of [his struggles with his swing]. Let’s just get into the fight. I’ve seen it. And I believe that’s what’s to come in the next month and beyond.”

This is not the position the Dodgers expected to be in when they re-signed Hernández to a three-year, $66 million contract this offseason — a move Roberts described as a “no-brainer” at the time after pushing for the front office to bring the free-agent back to Los Angeles.

He trusted Hernández’s bat, which mashed 33 home runs and 99 RBIs in his debut Dodgers season in 2024. He appreciated Hernández’s heartbeat, and how he delivered one of the season’s biggest swings in the fifth inning of Game 5 of the World Series.

In bringing Hernández back, the Dodgers hoped that his mere presence would elevate the rest of the roster for this year’s championship defense.

“He knows his value for our ballclub,” Roberts said. “He knows my expectations of him individually.”

Only, to this point, Hernández has struggled to replicate that same intangible magic.

After a blistering start to the season (.315 average, nine home runs, and an MLB-most 34 RBIs through his first 33 games), the outfielder suffered a groin/adductor strain while stretching for a line drive in Miami, landing him on the injured list for two weeks. When he returned, he looked far from 100%, struggling to rediscover his swing or cover much ground in right. Before long, a slump took hold. And as it stretched on through the summer — compounded by foot contusion on a foul ball he suffered in July — frustration began to mount.

“It’s tough when you feel good and then something happens and you have to miss … whatever the amount of games might be,” Hernández said. “It was one of those for me this year. I got injured, then I came back. I fouled it off my foot and then missed games [again].”

He later added: “For me, being hurt is more frustrating than having a bad year. I’d rather be on the field having a bad year, than not being on the field and just fighting back and forth.”

Staying on the field, of course, hasn’t alleviated Hernández’s problems. After the All-Star break, he said his body finally started feeling better. On Tuesday, he proclaimed his groin and foot to be back to full health.

And yet, over his previous eight games, he had batted only three-for-27 leading up to Sunday’s removal from the lineup. Worse than that, he had fallen back into a habit of chasing too much, leading to non-competitive at-bats at a time Roberts had been trying to emphasize the opposite.

“[I want to see] Teo getting back to having that edge,” Roberts reiterated.

In Hernández’s return to the lineup Tuesday, some positive signs finally presented themselves. He fought off a pair of two-strike pitches before lining a second-inning single. He did the same thing in the third inning to drive in a run. Defensively, there was another awkward moment, when Hernández failed to make a sliding catch on a shallow fly ball down the right-field line in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ four-run first inning. But even on that play, Roberts argued postgame, Hernández got a good jump and covered a lot of ground — breaking into the kind of hard-charging sprint that hadn’t always been there earlier this season.

“If I see a good jump getting off the ball, good effort, I’ve got no problem with it,” Roberts said.

Really, that’s all Roberts is hoping for from Hernández moving forward now.

To have the kind of consistent intensity level that has wavered at times this season. To rekindle that balance of having fun and playing with an edge down the stretch run of the season.

“We’re going to see that,” Roberts said. “I have no doubt.”

“You just leave everything on the field,” Hernández echoed. “I’m going to keep working, keep doing my routine, keep doing the stuff that I normally do to get back on track. And hopefully I get the results that I want to help the team.”

TAMPA, Fla. — First, the meme made Freddie Freeman laugh.

Then, in a serendipitous twist, it gave him a lightning-bulb epiphany about his recently ailing swing.

At the end of a long day during last week’s homestand — when Freeman was hit by a pitch on July 20, immediately removed from the game to get an X-ray, then informed he somehow hadn’t sustained serious injury — manager Dave Roberts shared with the first baseman a comical video edit he had received from a friend. A light reprieve at the end of a stressful day.

In it, the swing of Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in last year’s World Series was incorporated into a spin-off of the viral Coldplay kiss cam video (yes, that Coldplay kiss cam).

Freeman got a chuckle out of the clip.

But, while rewatching his Fall Classic moment, he also made an observation about his iconic swing.

On that night last October, Freeman noticed, “I’m more in my front ankle,” he later said — a subtle, but profound, contrast to how he had been swinging the bat amid a two-month cold spell he was mired in at the time.

So, for the rest of that night, Freeman thought about the difference. He went into the Dodgers’ batting cages the next afternoon focused on making a change.

“It’s a different thought of being in your legs when you’re hitting,” said Freeman, who had started the season batting .371 over his first 38 games, before slumping to a .232 mark over his next 49 contests. “It’s just more [about leaning] into my front ankle. It’s helping me be on time and on top [of the ball].”

“We’ll see,” he added with a chuckle, “how it goes in the game.”

Ten games later, it seems to be going pretty well.

Since making the tweak on July 21, Freeman is 14 for 39 (.359 average) with two home runs, four extra base hits, 10 RBIs and (most importantly) a renewed confidence at the plate.

After collecting his first three-hit game in a month Tuesday in Cincinnati, then his first home run in all of July the next evening, he stayed hot in the Dodgers’ series-opening 5-0 defeat of the Tampa Bay Rays on Friday, whacking a two-run double in the first inning and a solo home run in the fifth in front of a crowd of 10,046 at Steinbrenner Field (the New York Yankees’ spring training park serving as the Rays’ temporary home).

“That visual helped him kind of tap into something,” Roberts laughed recently of Freeman’s post-meme swing adjustment. “He is early, for a change. Versus being late, chasing.”

Freeman’s turnaround is something the Dodgers — who also got six scoreless innings out of Clayton Kershaw on Friday, lowering his season earned-run average to 3.29 in 13 starts — need out of several superstar sluggers over the final two months of the season.

Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw delivers during a 5-0 win over the Tampa Bay Rays on Friday.

(Jason Behnken / Associated Press)

During Thursday’s trade deadline, the team didn’t splurge on big-name acquisitions. The only addition they made to their recently slumping lineup (which ranked 28th in the majors in scoring during July) was versatile outfielder Alex Call from the Washington Nationals.

Instead, both Roberts and club executives have preached of late, the team is banking on players like Mookie Betts (who is batting .237), Teoscar Hernández (who has hit .215 since returning from an adductor strain in May), Tommy Edman (who has hit .210 since returning from an ankle injury in May) and even Shohei Ohtani (who leads the National League in home runs, but is batting only .221 since resuming pitching duties in June) to play up to their typical, potent standards.

“I think if you look at it from the offensive side, as far as our guys, they’ll be the first to tell you they’ve got to perform better and more consistently,” Roberts said. “That’s something that we’re all counting on.”

For much of the summer, Freeman had been squarely in that group, as well.

His recent Coldplay-inspired rebound, the club hopes, will be one of many that spark an offensive surge down the stretch this year.

It took just one game coming out of the All-Star break for Dave Roberts to know Mookie Betts still wasn’t right.

A week ago, Roberts was hopeful that Betts — coming off his first missed All-Star Game in a decade — would return from the break refocused and rejuvenated; ready to snap out of a career-worst start to his season and rediscover a swing that has eluded him for much of the campaign.

Instead, in the Dodgers’ second-half opener Friday night, Betts went 0 for 4 with two strikeouts. His batting average dipped to .241 (more than 20 points worse than he has ever posted in a full season) while his OPS fell to .688 (the worst it has been all year). And, as has been the case for most of the summer, his signs of frustration were abundantly clear, with the 32-year-old looking lost at the plate.

Thus, when Roberts set his team’s lineup for Saturday, the manager made a surprise decision to leave Betts out of it, giving his superstar shortstop an unplanned day off after calling Betts on Saturday morning to discuss the state of his game.

“Talking to him, seeing where his head is at, seeing where he’s at mechanically, I just thought tonight was a night where I felt he needed to be down,” Roberts said hours later, ahead of the Dodgers’ game against the Milwaukee Brewers.

“He was more than willing and wanted to be out there. But for me, I wanted to take it out of his hands [so he could] have a day. I’ve talked about this before, just having players watch a baseball game. And I understand we just had four days off at the break. But still showing up at the ballpark, and not participating, watching, that’s a different mindset, psyche than being at home. So for him to come here, show up, not play, know he’s not going to play, I feel good about the work he’s going to put in today. Also, I think, for the mind it will be beneficial.”

Betts did not talk to reporters Saturday, but did go through his normal set of pregame infield drills at shortstop — further confirming that, indeed, his absence from the lineup had nothing to do with any sort of injury-related issue.

While Roberts said his “expectation” is that Betts will be back in action Sunday, he left the door open to giving Betts another day off for the series finale.

“It’s going to be a day-to-day thing,” Roberts said. “It’s going to be my decision on how I feel he is mentally to take on that night’s starter.”

There was no specific moment from Friday’s game that convinced Roberts such a break was warranted. Instead, it was the fact that so little had seemingly changed from where Betts was before the All-Star break, when he reached the midway mark in a three-for-24 slump and batting just .185 over his previous 31 games.

“He’s not used to struggling like this,” Roberts said of Betts, who also has only 11 home runs and a .377 slugging percentage. “There’s a part of it where you feel like you’re letting people down, letting the team down. That weight that is just natural for him to carry is there. That’s a little bit from last night, just seeing him.”

Betts has struggled to identify the cause of his decline — one so stark, he has a below-league-average mark of 95 in the all-encompassing OPS+ metric (effectively meaning he has been 5% less productive than a league average hitter).

In an interview before Friday’s game, he said he has cycled through various “feels” with his swing in hopes of getting his mechanics realigned. Hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc pointed to inefficiencies in the way Betts “loads” his arms and hands, which he believes have impacted the slugger’s bat path and swing sequence.

“There’s no exact [fix], where you can do this, this and this,” Van Scoyoc said, “because he has to find something for him that works organically that gets him lined up.”

To that end, Roberts’ hope is that Saturday’s day off will help.

That it comes just two days into the second half signals how urgent Betts’ struggles have become.

“He understood,” Roberts said. “He’s a guy that wants to be out there every single day. But I think he understood that it was my decision and I think it’s best for him, I think it’s best for our ball club. He’ll be ready when called upon.”

Max Muncy knew he had gotten lucky, after his ugly-looking knee injury earlier this month proved to be nothing more than a bone bruise.

But, when doctors explained how close he came to suffering something so much worse, from when Michael A. Taylor slid into his leg at third base on July 2, even Muncy was amazed by the infinitesimal margins.

“If the timing was just a millisecond different either way,” he was told, “you’re probably looking at surgery, and done for a long time.”

Instead, barely two weeks removed from having the outside of his knee bent inward on that play, Muncy was out doing early work at Dodger Stadium on Friday afternoon; running in the outfield, playing catch with coaches and performing agility drills in front of trainers without any obvious signs of pain or discomfort.

“We’re pleasantly, not surprised, but happy with the spot that I’m in right now,” Muncy said afterward, having also taken swings for the first time since his injury earlier on Friday afternoon. “It feels great. I’m moving well. Progressing quickly. We’re trying to be smart about it, and understand where we’re at, and what it’s gonna take to get back on the field. But we’re in a really good spot … We’re kind of right where we think we should be at.”

If not, it seems, already a few steps ahead.

While Muncy was initially expected to miss roughly six weeks with his left knee bone bruise, manager Dave Roberts struck a more optimistic tone as the Dodgers opened the second half of their season.

“He’s in great shape right now,” Roberts said Friday. “I don’t really know a timeline. But I do know … it’s going to be a lot sooner than anticipated, which is good for all of us.”

Since Muncy — who was one of the hottest hitters in baseball in May and June — got hurt, the Dodgers have not looked like the same offense. In their last 11 games entering Saturday, the club was 3-8, averaging less than three runs per game, and struggling to fill the gaping hole their slugging third baseman has left in the middle of the lineup.

Since the start of July, only the penny-pinching Pittsburgh Pirates have been worse than the Dodgers in batting average (.205) and OPS (.594).

“We’ve still got a lot of good players,” Roberts said. “But yeah, there’s a certain line of demarcation when Max is not in the lineup, what happens to our offense.”

The Dodgers’ problems, of course, go beyond Muncy’s absence. Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman have all been slumping of late (or, in Betts’ case, for much of the season). Teoscar Hernández and Tommy Edman have been nowhere near their typical standard since returning from injuries in May. And the depth options the Dodgers have called upon have provided few sparks of life.

Still, Muncy figures to be a linchpin in the Dodgers’ long-term potential at the plate — with his recovery growing ever-steadily in importance as the rest of the lineup flounders in his wake.

“We got to figure out how to get something going,” said outfielder Michael Conforto, chief among the Dodgers’ underachievers this season. “Every time we go out there, we expect to score, and that’s what we’ve been doing all year. It’s just one of those stretches [where it’s] a little bit tougher to get runs in. But, you know, obviously, we have faith in our guys, and some big names in here that made their careers on scoring runs and driving guys in. I think we’ll be OK.”

Muncy, of course, is one of those proven names.

And in another fortunate stroke with his recovery, he remains confident his injury won’t significantly impact his swing once he does come back.

“If [the injury] was on the inside of the knee, it’d probably be a different story,” Muncy said. “But just being on the outside, I think it’s a good spot, knowing that I don’t feel it at all when I’m pushing off on the backside.”

Muncy tested that theory for the first time Friday, taking some light swings in the cage that he said “felt fine.”

“It’s a lot of work, more work than actually playing in the game, which always sucks,” Muncy said of his rehab process. “But it’s that way for a reason … You don’t want to have any other injuries that are a side effect from it.”

So far, even that latter concern has been quelled, with Muncy noting that “there’s no lingering side effects with it.”

“All in all,” he reiterated, “we’re about as lucky as we could be.”

ATLANTA — We need bat flips.

The home run swing-off to end Tuesday’s All-Star Game was great. Whether you embrace it as a revelation or dismiss it as a gimmick, baseball needs more of that kind of imagination on the national stage. On the morning after the game, it’s what you’re talking about.

But baseball cannot count on a tie score every summer.

The All-Star Game cannot live off old glories. The All-Star Game cannot thrive simply because the NFL turned the Pro Bowl into a flag football game and skills competition while the NBA turned its All-Star Game into a week of parties and 48 minutes of a defense-free scrimmages.

Baseball can say its All-Star Game is the best, but the bar is as low as the final round of a limbo competition. Baseball needs the best players, not the best available players, in the game. And, in an era dominated by social media and short attention spans, baseball needs innovation in the Home Run Derby — not just in an All-Star Game tiebreaker, but in the actual Home Run Derby that is its own Major Television Event on the night before the game.

The first suggestion, from Brent Rooker, the Athletics’ All-Star designated hitter: “I had the idea that we would just stick PCA (the Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong) and (the Athletics’) Denzel Clarke in the outfield during the Home Run Derby and just let them run down balls. That’s a fun idea that popped into our clubhouse a few weeks ago.”

An all-in-one Home Run Derby and skills competition of outfielders contorting their bodies in all directions to make highlight-worthy catches? That’s a cool thought.

Bat flips would be better.

The bat flip, once scorned as an instrument of disrespect, is now celebrated by the league itself. It naturally lends itself to the “Did you see it?” reels young fans share on Instagram and Snapchat.

The first round of Monday’s Home Run Derby was exhausting. It took nearly two hours, and what little flash there was felt forced. Besides, the sluggers you most wanted to see — Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge — declined to participate.

“I already did it,” Judge said Tuesday. “I don’t know what else you want from me. I think it’s time for somebody else to step up and do their thing and have fun with it. I love seeing new faces in the game go out and do their thing.”

Said Dodgers pitcher and Hall-of-Famer-in-waiting Clayton Kershaw: “It’s a lot of swings, man. It’s not easy to do. When I used to hit, I was tired after taking six swings. I can’t imagine doing that for three straight hours.

“If Shohei and Aaron Judge and those guys, if they had them all in there, it would be awesome. You can’t expect those guys to do it every single year.”

So keep the eight-man field but split it into two groups: four players in the traditional format, and four players in a one-round competition judged not only by how many home runs you hit but with how much flair you toss your bat after each one.

Dodgers veteran pitcher Clayton Kershaw, tapping gloves with teammate Will Smith after pitching in the second inning during the All-Star Game.

(Daniel Shirey / MLB Photos via Getty Images)

The creative and outrageous dunks in the NBA‘s slam dunk competition go viral. The All-Star bat flips would too.

“With respect to an event like the Home Run Derby, we should continue to innovate,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said. “It’s fundamentally an entertainment product.”

There’s an idea, Rob. Run with it.

“The game piece of it? Fundamentally, I believe in the game,” Manfred said. “I think what we have to do is continue to work with our very best players to make sure that they’re here and showcasing themselves in front of a fan base that is really, really important to us over the long haul.”

Right now, all the very best players are not here. When MLB announced the All-Star rosters, the league selected 65 players. By game time, with all the replacements for players that withdrew, the All-Star count was up to 81.

That meant that, for every four players announced as an All-Star, one chose not to play.

“Usually, when you think All-Star Game, you think probably the best at the time in the game right now are going to be playing,” Phillies All-Star designated hitter Kyle Schwarber said.

Sometimes they are: On Tuesday, Schwarber was the most valuable player, with the winning swings in the swing-off.

Schwarber and Kershaw noted that, for the most part, the position players are here, and the pitchers dominated the list of missing stars. Pitchers throw harder these days. They need time to recover. Tony Clark, the executive director of the players’ union, talked about the need for players to find “opportunities on the calendar to take a breather.”

And, frankly, the All-Star Game does not mean nearly as much to players as it did before interleague play started 28 years ago. Winning one for the National League used to actually mean something.

“The All-Star Game then and the All-Star Game now are two completely different things,” Clark said. “The requirements for players, the travel and logistics for their family and support, the day to day of a 162-game season is more complex and it’s more challenging than it’s ever been.”

Yet in 1980, when the All-Star Game was played at Dodger Stadium, players had one free day before resuming the schedule. Today, players have two days.

And, in 1980, fans got to see the players they wanted to see. Should each team have an All-Star representative? Yes. Should managers feel compelled to use every one of those players? No way.

On Tuesday, the National League used 13 pitchers and the American League 11.

In 1980, each league used five pitchers. Steve Stone and Bob Welch each pitched (gasp) three innings. The top four batters in the American League lineup — Willie Randolph, Fred Lynn, Rod Carew and Reggie Jackson — each batted at least three times.

Today’s pitchers are reluctant to work even one inning in the All-Star Game if they pitched on the final weekend of the first half. So move the All-Star Game back one day to Wednesday, and move the Home Run Derby back one day to Tuesday. No longer would players have to scramble for Sunday night private jets to get to the All-Star Game by Monday morning.

As a bonus, MLB could play the Futures Game on Monday, when no other games are being played, instead of in relative invisibility because the league insists on putting what it says is a showcase event up against a full schedule of regular-season games.

“It would be great,” Clark said, “to just have a conversation around the All-Star Game and talk about the All-Star Game and the great players that we have, doing so in a way that truly highlights the Midsummer Classic and truly puts players in a position where they are sprinting to come to the game.”

And flipping their bats when they get here.

ATLANTA — Major League Baseball will present its annual Home Run Derby on Monday night, and Shohei Ohtani isn’t on the list of scheduled participants.

Aaron Judge isn’t either.

A home run contest without baseball’s two most famous home-run hitters?

What’s the point?

Ohtani pointed to the contest’s physical demands as to why he didn’t compete. Judge said he would only consider participating if the event was staged in New York.

How unfortunate for baseball, which has the perfect stage to showcase its two most popular players but can’t persuade them to perform on it.

Here’s one potential remedy: Let Ohtani and Judge write the rules.

That might not change Judge’s position, but it could change Ohtani’s. Ohtani has certainly pondered modifications that could be made to the Derby to make him more inclined to participate, some of which he shared at All-Star media day.

“That’s not for me to decide,” Ohtani said in Japanese. “However, personally, I think there could be limits on the number of pitches, the number of swings, and a focus on flight distance.”

The commissioner’s office should listen.

As profitable as baseball is, its cultural relevance in this country is diminishing. The most popular athletes in the United States are football and basketball players. Outside of Ohtani, and maybe Judge, no baseball player transcends his sport.

In Ohtani, baseball finally has its long-awaited face of the game, and the sport would be negligent to not maximize his stardom, both domestically and abroad.

Cal Raleigh of the Seattle Mariners might be the major league leader in home runs, but he’s a nobody as far as the general public is concerned. The same is true of everyone else in the eight-player Derby field — Matt Olson of the Atlanta Braves, James Wood of the Washington Nationals, Junior Caminero of the Tampa Bay Rays, Jazz Chisholm Jr. of the New York Yankees, Byron Buxton of the Minnesota Twins, Oneil Cruz of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Brent Rooker of the Wandering Athletics.

Shohei Ohtani runs the bases after hitting his 30th homer of the season against the Chicago White Sox on July 1.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

By participating in the Derby, Ohtani wouldn’t just draw attention to the event. He would also elevate his competitors, giving them chances to introduce themselves to audiences that would otherwise remain ignorant of their existences.

If baseball has to reduce the number of swings taken by Derby participants to gain that kind of exposure for its players, it should reduce the number of swings taken by Derby participants.

For that matter, if Ohtani says he would participate only if he’s allowed to hit soccer balls, let him hit soccer balls.

Why not?

What would be compromised, the integrity of a barely-watchable made-for-television event?

Ohtani’s reticence is based on history. When Ohtani made his only Derby appearance in 2021, the format was similar to what it is now. In the first round, Ohtani had three minutes to hit as many homers as possible, as would be the case today. The Derby has since added a 40-pitch limit.

Ohtani was eliminated by Juan Soto in the opening round, after which he said with a simile, “It was more tiring than the regular season.”

Ohtani went on to win his first most valuable player award that year, but the Derby marked a turning point in his season. In 84 games before the All-Star break, Ohtani batted .279 with 33 homers and 70 runs batted in. In his 71 games after, he hit just .229 with 13 homers and 30 RBIs.

He implied that experience was why he was unlikely to return any time soon.

“With the current rules, it’s pretty difficult,” Ohtani said last month, “so for now, I don’t think there’s much of a chance.”

For baseball, that translates to limited viewership.

Viewership for the Derby was at its highest in the first decade of the 2000s. Of the five most-viewed Derbys, only one was staged in the last 15 years: The 2017 Derby, which Judge won as a rookie. Judge has not competed since.

The Derby doesn’t make the players. The players make the Derby. And if the sport’s only superstar is open to taking part, the league should facilitate it.

When Max Muncy first went down on Wednesday night, clutching his left knee and writhing in pain after a collision with Chicago White Sox baserunner Michael A. Taylor on a steal attempt at third base, Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes couldn’t help but let his mind go to a dark place.

“Obviously, [there were] a lot of emotions,” Gomes said. “From a coping mechanism in my head, it was like, ‘OK, he’s done for the year. We’re gonna have to figure out what the next path is. We have to be prepared for whatever is coming.’”

What came the next day, however, was unexpectedly good news.

Despite having his knee bent awkwardly, gruesomely inward, Muncy escaped with only a bone bruise. There were no ligament tears. No structural damage. No season-ending catastrophe.

Dodger Max Muncy grimaces as he holds his left knee after colliding with White Sox outfielder Michael A. Taylor on Wednesday at Dodger Stadium.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

“We’ve had a lot more [injury situations] where we’ve gone in optimistic and then come out the other side not as optimistic,” Gomes said. “So it was nice to have that turned on its head and know that, ‘Hey, he’s gonna be out there.’”

On Thursday, Muncy said he is expected to miss roughly six weeks. But even that timeline would give him a month-plus before the playoffs to try and rediscover the swing that made him one of the hottest hitters in baseball the past two months.

And because Muncy’s injury was to the lower half of his body, manager Dave Roberts noted, the hope is that “it’s not something that should affect the swing” when he does return.

“With the time we have, there’s nothing pressing as far as needing to rush him back,” Roberts said. “I think we’re in a good spot.”

That’s why, as of Friday, Gomes had shelved those contingency plans that were running through his mind 48 hours earlier. His front office wasn’t urgently scouring the trade market looking for an instant replacement.

Instead, Gomes and Roberts insisted the Dodgers’ trade deadline plans are unlikely to be altered in the wake of Muncy’s injury — with the team content to rely on internal options now, while awaiting Muncy’s return later this year.

“Knowing the certainty of Max coming back at some point,” Roberts said, “I don’t think that will really impact our thinking going into the deadline.”

“Even if [his recovery] is way slow,” Gomes added, “you have a full month of baseball before we hit the playoffs. So we’re giving him that time to get back into a good place and try to set a good foundation, like we try to do with all of our guys, to be prepared for that stretch run.”

Fans cheer after Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy hit a three-run homer against the Washington Nationals at Dodger Stadium on June 22.

(Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)

Trade speculation surrounding the Dodgers’ third base position is nothing new.

Earlier this year, when Muncy was struggling mightily through the opening month of the year, there were growing calls from the fanbase for the team to find a more productive replacement before the July 31 deadline.

Lately, however, Muncy had quieted such noise with one of the best stretches of his career. Before getting hurt, he was batting .308 over his past 46 games with 12 home runs, 48 RBIs and more walks (32) than strikeouts (26).

“When he’s not in the lineup,” Roberts said, “our offense tapers off.”

Whether Muncy can return to such levels of production, of course, won’t become clear until well after the deadline passes. But finding impact bats on this year’s trade market might not be an easy task, especially at third base.

Nolan Arenado has long been linked to the Dodgers in trade rumors. But he has career-lows in batting average (.247) and OPS (.701) this year, and is still due some $40 million over the next two-and-a-half seasons on his contract.

The Cardinals’ Nolan Arenado watches his double in the sixth inning of a game against the Cleveland Guardians in Cleveland on June 27.

(Sue Ogrocki / Associated Press)

Lower-profile names such as Eugenio Suárez, Ryan McMahon and Ramón Urías (who could be a better roster fit for the Dodgers as a utility weapon) could also be moved. But the Dodgers won’t be desperate to overpay for an impact bat knowing Muncy should be back well before the start of the playoffs.

“Obviously, he’s been so dialed in, one of the best hitters in the game over the last six weeks, so there’s always some [question of], ‘How are we going to get back to that spot?’” Gomes acknowledged of Muncy.

“But I don’t think that is something that Max has never done before,” he added, referencing Muncy’s ability to contribute to last year’s World Series run despite missing three months in the regular season with an oblique injury. “So there’s a comfort level. We have some time. We’ll make sure that he’s eased back in. We have enough technology that he can take at-bats and see pitches before he ever has to go out on rehab and is back in a major-league game. We should be getting some approximation of what his swing was, and then use that time to get into a rhythm.”

In the meantime, the Dodgers plan to incorporate Tommy Edman at third base, where he has 94 career big-league appearances (mostly in 2019 and 2020 with the St. Louis Cardinals, before Arenado’s arrival there).

“It’s a position I’m comfortable with,” Edman said Friday, after taking grounders at third at the start of his pregame work. “The hops [there] are weird, so you gotta play a little bit more one-handed … But it’s still the infield. You still gotta work on the footwork, just like you would at second and short. Catching the ball, getting behind your throws. It’s a lot of the same concepts.”

Kiké Hernández and Miguel Rojas will also see time at third, typically against left-handed pitching, while triple-A prospect Alex Freeland could offer depth from the minors if needed.

Hyeseong Kim, meanwhile, should also get a bump in playing time at second base on days Edman is at third.

“It’s gonna be a good opportunity for him,” Roberts said of Kim. “It’ll be good to know more and get him some more experience.”

When the deadline rolls around at the end of the month, the Dodgers will have more information to work with — not only on the state of Muncy’s rehab, but also about how their lineup fares without him.

With a top-five farm system in the sport, according to MLB Pipeline and Baseball America, they will have the ammunition to make a splash if needed.

But for now, their expectation is that Muncy’s injury won’t force them into a drastic midseason roster makeover. They are hopeful that what initially appeared to be a season-altering moment will be nothing more than a temporary speed bump in their pursuit of a second consecutive title.

“We’re playing good baseball as a team. We’re in a good position division-wise right now,” Gomes said. “So if we keep doing that, we can weather [Muncy’s absence].”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The glasses might’ve come first. But it was a light bulb moment with the swing that made the most profound change.

Just over a month into the season this year, veteran Dodgers slugger Max Muncy was in a desperate search for answers.

Through the team’s first 30 games, his batting average started with a one and his home run total was stuck on zero. His role as the team’s starting third baseman was being called into question, fueling early-season speculation that the team would need to replace him before the trade deadline. He was absorbing daily criticism from fans, while trying not to succumb to internal self-flagellation.

The 10-year veteran had gone through cold starts before. But nothing quite so frustrating as this.

“It’s a privilege to play under this pressure, and it’s something I’ve always thrived on, but it doesn’t mean it’s been easy,” Muncy said on the last day of April. “It’s been a rough month.”

Starting that afternoon, however, Muncy made one big change. Upon learning he had astigmatism in his right eye, he began wearing glasses at the plate to balance out his vision. In his first game using them, he hit his first home run of the year.

Then, nine days later, came the real breakthrough.

After spending the entirety of the winter tinkering with his swing, and most of the opening month trying to calibrate his mechanics, everything suddenly synced up during a May 9 at-bat in Arizona.

Muncy took a quick hack at a high fastball from Diamondbacks reliever Kevin Ginkel. He lined a ninth-inning, game-tying single through the right side of the infield in the Dodgers’ eventual win at Chase Field. And he realized that, finally, he’d found a feeling in the batter’s box he’d been chasing the last several years.

A demarcation point had just been established.

And Muncy’s season has been transformed ever since.

“The funny thing about baseball is, sometimes, it just takes one swing, one play, one pitch to lock someone in,” he said. “And ever since that day, I’ve had that feeling in the back of my head. Like, ‘That’s what it’s supposed to feel like.’”

In 36 games before then, Muncy was hitting .188 with only one home run, eight RBIs and 43 strikeouts; his early days with the glasses not even leading to an immediate turnaround.

But since May 9, he has been one of the best hitters in baseball, and on one of the most prolific stretches of his entire career. Over his last 43 games, Muncy’s batting average is .313, a personal best over any span that long in the majors. He has 12 home runs and a whopping 47 RBIs, a major-league-leading total in that stretch. According to Fangraphs’ all-encompassing wRC+ statistic, only Ronald Acuña Jr., Cal Raleigh, Aaron Judge and Ketel Marte have been more productive at the plate.

And, most important, he has re-established himself as a central cog in the Dodgers’ lineup.

“He’s one of our most trusted hitters,” manager Dave Roberts said this past weekend. “I haven’t always been able to say that.”

Being a better, more trusted hitter has been a work in progress for Muncy ever since the devastating elbow injury he suffered at the end of 2021.

In Muncy’s prime years with the Dodgers from 2018-2021, he not only blossomed as one of the best sluggers in baseball by belting 118 home runs over a four-year stretch, but did so while posting a .246 batting average and .371 on-base-percentage; solid marks for a power threat occupying a key role in the middle of the Dodgers’ order.

At the core of that all-around approach was an ability to handle pitches to all parts of the plate — none more important than elevated fastballs at the top of the strike zone.

Dodgers first baseman Max Muncy writhes in pain after colliding with the Milwaukee Brewers’ Jace Peterson during the final regular-season game in 2021.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“When I’m going well, I’m a really good high-fastball hitter,” Muncy said earlier this year.

“When Max is covering that pitch,” added hitting coach Aaron Bates, “it allows him to do so many other things as a hitter.”

Coming off his elbow injury, however, getting to high heat became a weakness in Muncy’s game. For much of the next two years, when he still hit for power but batted only a combined .204, he felt “it was really hard to replicate” his old swing. Last year, he made some incremental progress — when he batted .232 — but was stalled by an oblique strain that cost him the middle three months of the season.

Thus, this winter, Muncy set his mind to rediscovering his old mechanics.

“It really wasn’t that big of a change,” he said. “It was just going back to what I did when I first got here from 2018 to 2021. The same philosophy I had all those years.”

The work started in January, when Bates and fellow Dodgers hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc visited Muncy at his home in Texas and crafted a simple focus for the 34-year-old’s offseason work: Purposely practice hitting grounders and line drives on a lower trajectory, in hopes it would train his swing to stay on top of the ball even on pitches up in the zone.

“You know he’s naturally going to have loft in his swing to elevate the baseball easily,” Bates said. “So that was a focus point for him, making sure he can hit a hard line drive on a pitch up in the zone, not necessarily trying to elevate it more than he needs to.”

A sound theory, with some disastrous early results.

At the start of the year, Muncy’s new swing thought bred other unexpected bad habits. In his effort to stay on top of the ball, he was opening up his backside and letting his front shoulder drift too far forward at the start of his move. As a result, Muncy had trouble squaring the ball and keeping his bat level through the strike zone. It led to not only a lack of power, but a diminished ability to distinguish the kind of pitches being thrown — evidenced by a nearly 32% strikeout rate in April that was seventh-highest among MLB hitters.

“That’s where it’s tough playing the sport,” Muncy said. “Because you can’t chase results immediately, even though you kind of have to. You have to chase the process in the long run.”

And even as external pressure over his dwindling production mounted, Muncy said the club’s coaches and front office assured him he’d have time to keep working through it.

“It’s easier to stick with something long-term when that’s the case,” Muncy said. “And for me, that’s been my entire career. Trust the process, not the result.”

During late April, Muncy’s process included a visit to the same eye doctor who had diagnosed Kiké Hernández with eye astigmatism last year; a discovery that prompted Hernández to start wearing glasses, and keyed a sudden offensive turnaround in the second half of the season.

Turned out, Muncy had a similar problem. Though his vision was 20/12, astigmatism in his right eye had made him left-eye dominant, a subtle but limiting dynamic for a left-handed hitter.

Thus, on the last day of the month, Muncy also started wearing prescription-lensed glasses, and christened the new eyewear with a home run in his first game using them.

“It’s not necessarily something that I need,” Muncy said. “But just any chance at all it evens out both eyes for me, I’ve been taking it.”

Yet, in his first week using them, he still went just six-for-28 with nine strikeouts and only five walks. He was still grinding through his adjustments to his mechanics. He was still waiting for one swing where everything would feel synced up.

When Muncy came to the plate in that May 9 game against the Diamondbacks to face Ginkel, he surveyed the situation, put his swing mechanics out of his head, and tried to focus on only one objective.

“It was guy on second, no outs,” Muncy recalled, “so I was trying to give up the at-bat, get the ball on the ground to the right side of second base, and move the runner from second to third.”

Throughout his career, this is when Muncy is at his best. When his mind isn’t clouded by the pressure to produce, or the particulars of his swing. When he’s “going out there and just trying to play the situation,” he explained. “Like, ‘What is my at-bat calling for in this moment?’”

And on that day in Arizona, with the Dodgers trailing by one run in the ninth, that simplified mindset gave Muncy his moment of long-awaited clarity.

Ginkel threw a 95 mph fastball up near Muncy’s chest. The slugger hit it with the kind of quick, level swing he’d spent all winter attempting to craft.

As the ball rocketed through the right side of the infield for a game-tying single, Muncy felt a lightbulb go off as he pulled into first base.

Fans cheer as the Dodgers’ Max Muncy rounds the bases after hitting a grand slam on June 22 against the Washington Nationals.

(Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)

“I was so short and direct to it, it just triggered something in my head,” Muncy said. “It kind of took all the stuff I’d been working on, even going back to the winter, and was like, ‘OK, this is how I’m trying to get it to feel.’”

Muncy hasn’t looked back ever since.

By being able to cover the top of the strike zone, he hasn’t had to cheat on fastballs or hunt on tougher pitches to hit around his knees. When coupled with the glasses that have helped him better differentiate velocity from spin, he’s been able to be selective and wait out mistakes.

“There’s been spells in his career where it was the three [true] outcomes and that was it,” Roberts said, long a believer in Muncy’s ability to be a more potent hit collector, rather than just a high-powered, high-strikeout slugging presence. “Now, I think he’s a complete hitter. So you see the runs batted in, the homers, the quality of at-bats all tick up.”

During this torrid two-month stretch, highlights have come in bunches for Muncy. He’s had two seven-RBI games and another with six. He hit a game-tying home run in the ninth inning against the New York Mets on June 3. He had two grand slams in the span of three games last week.

He has gone from the subject of trade deadline rumors to a fan-voting finalist to make the All-Star Game.

He knows it’s still only been two months; that, in a sport as fickle as baseball, the feeling he has discovered at the plate can just as quickly disappear again.

But for the first time in years, he’s healthy, in sync and possessing total clarity — in both vision and mind — every time he steps to the dish.

“This is definitely more of what I was envisioning,” Muncy said this weekend, reflecting back on the early-season struggles and laborious swing work over the winter that preceded his two-month tear.

“Now, I have the confidence to know I can accomplish pretty much anything I want to do for that situation. Whereas, before, you don’t always have that.”

Lunging men are perceived as dangerous.

In an America that has long weaponized descriptions of how men of color look and move to justify use of force, that is especially true of dark men lunging at white women.

So when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said after Sen. Alex Padilla interrupted her news conference Thursday that “people need to identify themselves before they start lunging” — it’s hard to believe it wasn’t meant to be an intentionally loaded word, with loaded results.

For those of you who don’t watch Fox and other right-wing media, I’ll fill you in on how Noem’s description played out. Padilla, the Trumpian version of the story now goes, got what he deserved: He busted into a press conference uninvited, they say, pushed his way toward the stage and failed to identify himself.

Just ask my inbox.

“Here is what your article should have said,” wrote one fan of my column about the incident. “‘DEI appointee Senator Alex Padilla, dressed like a truck driver and acting like a potential attacker or mental case, burst into a press conference being conducted by a high ranking member of the Cabinet and started shouting and interrupting her.’”

Another reader put that dog-whistle racism more succinctly.

“No Juan above the law,” the reader quipped.

We’ll get to whether Padilla lunged or not and just how dangerous a lunge really is. But the larger issue is the alternate reality the Trump administration is building to cultivate fear and build support for a military crackdown. The ask isn’t that we believe Padilla was a threat, but that we believe that America has devolved into a immigrant-induced chaos that only the military can quell, and that Trump needs the powers of a king to lead the military to our salvation.

So the question isn’t really whether Padilla lunged or not — since, as the video shows, it’s clear he was nowhere close to Noem and had no intent to harm — but rather why Noem chose to call it a lunge.

“It was very disingenuous of Kristi Noem to make the claim that he lunged at her,” Joan Donovan told me. She’s an expert on disinformation and an assistant professor of journalism at Boston University.

“The Trump administration is salivating over a major contestation that would allow them to roll the military out into any old town,” she said. “They are making it seem as if without this kind of major intervention and excessive force, that these people are ungovernable.”

Padilla, the son of Mexican immigrants, is known to be a level-headed guy. My colleague Gustavo Arellano describes him as a “goody-two-shoes.”

But these aren’t level-headed days. Padilla said that he was in the federal building on Thursday for a briefing with a general, because for weeks he’s been trying unsuccessfully to get answers about how deportations are being handled.

That briefing was delayed by Noem’s news conference, and so — escorted by federal authorities who knew exactly who they were escorting, Padilla said — he went to listen to Noem in the hopes of getting some information.

Padilla said he got fed up listening to her remarks about criminals and invasions and tried to ask a question, while moving forward past the wall of television cameras. In the videos I’ve watched, multiple federal agents — seemingly some from Homeland Security and the FBI — block his way then begin pushing him back. Padilla seems to continue to push forward, but is overpowered and forced into the hallway. It’s here where he’s taken to the ground and cuffed.

It’s hard to see a lunge in there. And if there was one, it was from at least a good 10 feet away from Noem, at a minimum. Use-of-force expert Ed Obayashi told me that in situations such as this, law enforcement officers are expected to use their judgment on what is a danger.

“They were trying to keep him from approaching,” Obayashi said, pointing out it was the officers’ job to protect Noem. “They were trying to do what they could under the circumstances to prevent him from getting closer.”

But, he added, from what we can see in the videos, it doesn’t look like Padilla showed “intent” to cause harm and he was really far away. Distance makes a difference when judging whether a lunge is a threat.

“It doesn’t seem like he was going to rush up,” Obayashi said.

So, to be fair to officers who may or may not have at first realized they were manhandling a U.S. senator, they had a job to do and were doing it, even if a bit zealously.

But Noem knows better. It’s hard to imagine she didn’t recognize Padilla, who served on her confirmation committee and is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Safety.

And if she didn’t, her confidant and close advisor Corey Lewandowski certainly did. Padilla told the New York Times that he was being detained in the hallway “when of all people, Corey Lewandowski … comes running down the hall and he starts yelling, ‘Let him go! Let him go!’”

And of course, Padilla was yelling that he was a senator, and forcefully denies any lunge.

“I wasn’t lunging at her or anybody, and yes, I identified myself,” he said on CNN.

Noem, of course, could have said something in the moment to defuse the situation. She could have asked Padilla back into the room to answer his question. Padilla said the two met after the news conference and spoke for about 15 minutes, which means Noem knew his intentions when she later accused him of “lunging.”

So what could have been handled as an unfortunate encounter was instead purposely upgraded for propaganda purposes. Shortly after Noem’s statement, the White House press secretary posted on X that Padilla “recklessly lunged toward the podium,” cementing that narrative into right-wing conscientiousness.

For weeks, the Trump administration has been ramping up its war on dissent. Weeks before Padilla was handcuffed, U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) was indicted by a grand jury for “forcibly impeding and interfering” with federal law enforcement after a scuffle outside of a New Jersey ICE detention center. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested during the same incident, but charges were later dropped.

In April, Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested inside her own courthouse after being accused of helping an immigrant appearing in her court to evade ICE officers by allowing him to exit through a public door.

And just before the Padilla incident, Noem claimed that federal agents would remain in Los Angeles despite protests, where hundreds have been cited or arrested. By Friday, Marines had been deployed in Los Angeles, with little clarity on whether their guns contained live rounds and under what circumstances they were authorized to fire.

“We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city,” Noem said, right before Padilla interrupted.

Liberate an American city. With troops.

Quash dissent. With fear.

A survey last fall by PRRI found that 26% of Republicans say that “it is necessary for the progress of this country that the president has the power to limit the influence of opposing parties and groups.”

It also found that there is a “strong overlap among Americans who hold Christian nationalist and authoritarian views.”

“If it is the case that Trump and Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth are going to continue arresting Democratic representatives, then that is authoritarianism,” Donovan said. “Those are the people whose job it is to represent the common man, and if they can’t do that because they’re so bogged down with false charges or trumped-up charges, then we don’t live in a democracy.”

Padilla may have lost his trademark cool during that press conference, but Noem did not.

She knew exactly what she was saying, and why. A Padilla asking questions is a threat to Trump.

A Padilla lunging becomes a threat to society, one that only Trump can stop.

It’s 7 p.m. on a Thursday at the driving range at the Westside’s Rancho Park Golf Course.

At one end of the raised platform, the stalls are mostly occupied by polo shirt-wearing men quietly practicing their swings. But at the other end, a crowd gathers. People of all backgrounds are vibing to hip-hop and Afrobeats playing over two portable speakers and socializing over beer and snacks from the food stand. They’re dressed in streetwear and stylish sports apparel — Jordan 1s, fitted caps, tennis skirts and baggy pants. One woman is wearing tall platform boots and a patterned skirt and hugging friends. When someone steps up to take a swing, others watch and offer support and pointers.

“Remember to breathe,” someone says.

“Relax your grip,” advises another.

Aspiring golf pro Rob Perea, right, teaches beginning golfers during a Swang golf event.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Not your typical golf meetup, this is Swang, an L.A. golf collective that hosts a regular gathering called “Free Range,” where attendees can receive casual guidance from longtime golfers — and just hang out. With the welcoming motto “pull up, tap in,” founder Modi Oyewole created Swang to provide a space for the golf-curious and those who’ve been searching for like-minded folks to play with in the historically white- and male-dominated sport. He says that for generations, entering the world of golf has been both financially and culturally difficult.

“When I ask people how they found out about us, a lot of the stories are the same,” says Oyewole, 38. “People never felt like this was a thing they could do. But with this, we are quite literally saying, f— all that. We can do this too. You can wear what you want. You can be you and still come play.”

Swang golf collective founder Modi Oyewole, left, with Juliet Udeochu.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

A small camera crew follows Oyewole, who is wearing a Toro y Moi T-shirt, cargos and Adidas sneakers, capturing content for Swang’s social media accounts. He takes a powerful swing, sending the ball flying onto the field. You’d think that he’s been playing for years, but golf is a new passion for the multifaceted creative who’s worked at various record labels and for brands like Nike and Redbull.

Oyewole’s father introduced him to the sport about 20 years ago during the height of Tiger Woods’ career. “I think seeing a Black person in this sport that’s predominantly white and him dominating it definitely got my dad like, ‘Alright, we can do this now. We have representation,’” Oyewole recalls. His dad began taking him and his younger brother to a public driving range in their District of Columbia neighborhood until it shut down.

Oyewole didn’t think about golf again until several years later, when one of his friends invited him to the Hypegolf Invitational hosted by Hypebeast in Santa Clarita — an invitation he accepted begrudgingly, he says. But what he saw surprised him.

“This was my first time experiencing golf in it’s entirety, ever. I’d never been to a golf course, let alone a very fancy country club, and I’d also never seen golf presented in this way,” he recalls.

One of the first people he saw at Hypegolf was rapper Macklemore, who was rocking a clothing collaboration between his golf line Bogey Boys and Adidas. Every hole on the course was sponsored by a different brand. DJs were spinning upbeat music, and all of the attendees were, in Oyewole’s words, “swaggy.”

Blaise Butler of Los Angeles sets up a golf ball on the tee, left, while attendees pose for photos. Swang’s Instagram bio reads that it’s a community for those “who were never invited — but always belonged.”

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

He was also amazed to run into several people within his orbit who he didn’t know played golf. “It was just one of those moments where I was like, ‘Wait, I feel like they figured out a way to make this digestible to a person like me,’” says Oyewole. “It was eye-opening because it taught me that the game was cool, and it wasn’t the game that I was upset at. It was the context surrounding the game.”

A few weeks later, Oyewole quit his job as the vice president of creative, experiential and content development at Def Jam Recording. With his newfound free time, he started playing golf at the Maggie Hathaway Golf Course in South Central — named after a longtime civil rights activist who helped break the color barrier on L.A.’s public golf courses — with a friend who gifted him hand-me-down clubs. Before long, he was hooked.

He hosted the first Swang event in August 2023 at the Rancho Park driving range. Oyewole and two of his friends brought a speaker to play music, along with golf clubs and balls for attendees to practice with. About 25 people showed up, including a few golf influencers like Jacques Slade and Loulou Gonzalez — some of whom had never played golf before and others who’ve been playing their whole lives.

“Just seeing that was magical, but I think what was more magical than that was hearing these longtime golfers say, “Man, I’ve been golfing forever and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Oyewole says. “You’re not going to see this makeup of people in this size at the driving range. It doesn’t happen. Golf doesn’t look like this.”

Swang arrives in L.A. at a time when golf is booming in popularity post-pandemic, particularly among women and young people. Although golf has long been perceived as a sport that “older” people play, the National Golf Foundation revealed that in 2024, the largest group of on-course golfers — nearly 6.3 million players — were between the ages of 18 to 34. Since 2019, there’s been a 41% increase of female golfers, the NGF reports, and every year since 2020, roughly 3.3 million people have hit the course for the first time. The surge can be credited to content creators and YouTubers amplifying the sport online, trendy apparel brands, shows like “Full Swing” on Netflix, nightlife-adjacent establishments like TopGolf and collectives like Swang who are introducing the sport to a new demographic.

A crowd fills the top level of the driving range.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Swang attracts roughly 75 to 100 regular attendees at each Free Range session. Among them are creatives, musicians, entrepreneurs, tech professionals, actors, marketers and more.

Although some people bring their own golf gear to the meetups, none is required. It’s also “a safe place to suck,” Oyewole says.

Prior to discovering Swang, Adil Kadir’s only experience with the sport was going to TopGolf, but it was something he wanted to get better at. As someone who worked in the tech industry, he viewed golfing as a “language” or entry point that could improve his “ability to integrate into the world of business.”

But through Swang, he discovered that golfing was also fun. “Nothing can really stimulate the amount of dopamine you get from actually hitting the ball the right way,” he says.

Beginning golfers get individual instruction.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Stacey Esteban was nervous about attending Free Range for the first time because of negative experiences she had at other golf ranges in L.A.

“I’ll hear side comments from other people who don’t look like me, and they’re trying to give me lessons that I never asked for, and it doesn’t feel safe for me. But here, I was like, ‘It’s safe,’ ” says Esteban, who started playing golf during the pandemic. “These are people I’d want to talk to and hang out with.”

Josh Hubberman, 43, has been playing golf on and off since he was a child, but he didn’t get back into the sport until he went to a Swang meetup last year. “Driving ranges are often quiet [with] two people in a bay, and you’re kind of just politely waiting for a bay to open,” says Hubbeman, who is the co-founder of the creative venture studio Cthdrl. “Then when you show up at Swang, we have music playing. We take over 10-plus bays, and it’s a big social event as well, so there’s an energy that immediately, you get on site and it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s got to be Swang!’ ” About a year later, Hubberman reached out to Oyewole about teaming up with Cthdrl and working together to turn Swang into a viable business.

Swang is already making an impact on the golf industry in L.A. and beyond. In August, the collective programmed the music at an exclusive TopGolf event featuring rapper Larry June. Earlier this year, Swang partnered with the Rolling Loud music festival to co-produce a golf invitational and release a capsule collection. Swang also hosted a tournament in L.A. called Spicoli’s Scramble — in honor of Oyewole’s late best friend — and raised $20,000 for the Grammy Museum and Recording Academy’s Quinn Coleman scholarship.

The larger vision for Swang, Oyewole says, is to continue hosting the Free Range sessions and eventually add a membership component that would allow members to access exclusive events and experiences such as group trips to golf tournaments around the globe. The collective recently started creating short- and long-form social media content, and they will debut their first Swang apparel piece at Paris Fashion Week later this month.

Back at the driving range, chill R&B music is playing, and a handful of attendees are taking their final swings for the night before the overhead lights at the range shut off.

Reni Somoye, 32, was about to leave, but she decides to stay after another attendee encourages her to hit the ball one last time. She’s been watching other people throughout the night and realized that she needed to swing more powerfully. When it’s her turn, she walks toward the edge of the stall, pauss, swings and then strikes the ball so hard it flies out onto the field. The group that was mingling nearby begins to cheer.

She turns around, smiling from ear to ear, and daps up the coach.

“Alright,” she says. “Alright, that was good!”

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

On the most basic level, “Stick” is about a prematurely washed-up golfer who takes a teen prodigy under his wing and on the road. Off they go in an RV to hit some big amateur tournaments, accompanied by the kid’s mother and the old pro’s irascible buddy. The kid gets to fall in love with a free-spirited lass. Adventures are had. Lessons are learned.

But very little about golf takes place on a basic level (except maybe in “Caddyshack”). The sport is rife with metaphors. Lay up or go for broke? (see also, “Tin Cup.”) Keep your cool under pressure or lose it in the sand trap? So it makes sense that “Stick,” premiering June 4 on Apple TV+, uses the game of golf to take a swing at the game of life.

The wash-up, Pryce Cahill (played by Owen Wilson), seeks redemption. Years back, he flipped out on the course, and his life has been in free fall since — he and his wife (Judy Greer) are getting a divorce, and their home is being sold. But then he meets the 17-year-old prodigy, Santi (newcomer Peter Dager), who he sees as the key to a second chance. Santi, meanwhile, knows he’s good; when he pummels a ball, it sounds like a sonic boom. But his first coach was his hard-ass, now-vanished dad, and Santi now has trouble taking golf seriously or respecting his elders.

These human elements intrigued series creator Jason Keller far more than anything that might happen on the links. “I love golf, but I’m not good at it,” he said. “I am routinely frustrated by it.”

Owen Wilson, left, Judy Greer and Peter Dager in a scene from “Stick.”

(Apple)

Frustration, of course, is a universal quality. So is disappointment. These are the elements that pushed Keller, who wrote the screenplay for the 2019 movie “Ford v Ferrari,” to create “Stick.”

“Long before the story was set on a golf course, I was really interested in exploring a character who had not lived up to expectations,” he said. “I was interested in characters that had great promise but ultimately didn’t achieve that promise. What happens to somebody afterward? How do they react to that? Do they let themselves be defined by not achieving that level, or do they try to reconcile that? Does it motivate them to excel in other areas of their life?”

Wilson, who also readily admits his golf game isn’t the strongest — “My dad and my brothers played, but I was always intimidated by it” — sees another key parallel to life: As much as you seek perfection, you can never achieve it.

“There’s a little bit of a chess thing with golf, in that you can never really master it,” he said. “That can feel like life too. People talk about Tiger Woods winning the Masters by like 12 strokes and deciding his swing isn’t quite right. Pryce talks about how the game takes and takes and takes. I think people feel that way about life as well.”

Mariana Treviño, the Mexican actor who plays Santi’s mom, Elena, agrees that “Stick” is about dealing with hardships. “Elena is in a moment in her life where she had a big disappointment,” she said. “Her family broke down. Sometimes in life when something very strong happens to you, you just kind of shut out from the world. You think that you’re going to protect that wound by just not moving too much from a place, or not directly confronting something that is painful.”

“Long before the story was set on a golf course, I was really interested in exploring a character who had not lived up to expectations,” said “Stick” creator Jason Keller.

(Matt Seidel / For The Times)

If this all sounds a tad serious, “Stick” really isn’t. As with most anything starring Wilson, whose Texas/California cool works just fine in the series’ Indiana setting (Keller hails from Indianapolis), “Stick” feels easy and breezy even when it gets into heavy-ish themes. The tone suggests a riff on “Ted Lasso” but with golf instead of soccer.

Wilson and Marc Maron, who plays Pryce’s grumpy, long-suffering best bud (who is dealing with grief of his own), keep up the steady banter of two guys who know each other’s foibles and try to resist the urge to poke them. Zero, Santi’s new friend and life guru played by Lilli Kay, is a self-described “genderqueer, anticapitalist, postcolonial feminist,” and the series manages to have fun with her without making fun of her.

Elena, meanwhile, is mildly suspicious of the whole endeavor, but she finds the aging white golfers amusing. She also likes the cash Pryce has thrown her way for the privilege of coaching her son.

Put them all together in an RV, and on a series of golf courses, and you’ve got the makings of a modern family comedy. Except most of the “family” aren’t related.

“They’re a sort of a found family, and they are all very different personalities,” Keller said. “But ultimately they are what each other needed, and none of them knew it. I think that’s the beauty and the fun and the heart of the show. We’re watching a group of people that don’t fit together at first, and then they realize they needed each other. I hope that warmth and the feel-good element of that is felt by audiences.”

“They’re a sort of a found family, and they are all very different personalities,” said Jason Keller about the characters. “But ultimately they are what each other needed, and none of them knew it.” Lilli Kay, left, Mariana Treviño, Judy Greer and Marc Maron in “Stick.”

(Apple)

But that sense of major disappointment, and the question of how to turn the page, still lingers over the story. Keller is intimately acquainted with that kind of challenge.

He was 25, newly arrived in Hollywood, when doctors discovered a benign brain tumor. It was successfully removed, but the subsequent nerve damage meant Keller had to retrain his brain to let him walk again. Now 56, he says he “didn’t realize what a gift that hard experience was. I became very grateful for being physically healthy.”

Keller used that sink-or-swim experience to write his “Stick” characters. “Everybody has a point in their life that just brought them to their knees,” he said. “It could be a divorce or the death of a loved one. We all face these personal tragedies or challenges. What do you do with them after you go through ’em and survive ’em? That’s the real question.”

Even Santi, the youngest character in “Stick,” has been burned by life. “He’s scared, and he has every reason to be,” Dager said. “His father left him.” And he responded by building a hard shell and walking with a swagger.

Dager embraced the whole package. “I fell in love with his past but also his soul and the way he protects himself with the humor he uses as a defense mechanism,” Dager said. “And then once we get to know him and he starts to fall in love and he starts to trust people, you really see the kid. You see who he actually wants to be.”

And if you do happen to be a golfer, if you know a birdie from an eagle, an iron from a wood, “Stick” doesn’t skimp on the sports stuff. It might even inspire you to go out to the garage and excavate that moldering set of clubs. Or not.

“The golfers I’ve shown it to have connected to it and appreciated it at the level of the sport,” Keller said. “And the others who have seen it who are not golfers seem to be responding to it at a purely emotional character level. I think they’re connecting to it. We’ll see if we got it right. I hope we did.”