It doesn’t matter how much logic you apply to a three-game losing streak, how many reasonable and sound arguments you can make about the long season and so forth. It’s still hard to keep them all straight when it happens at the start of the season. 

It’s like the hitter who starts the season in a terrible slump, rather than hiding it in the middle of the summer. By August, you accrue so many at-bats that even a 1-for-20 doesn’t cut your legs out entirely. But at the start? When every time you look up at the scoreboard and your batting average starts with a 0? 

Derek Jeter suffered through an 0-for-34 in April 2004, and late in that skid he heard something he may have heard at Yankee Stadium only two or three times in 19 years: boos. They weren’t loud. They weren’t everywhere. But they were there. 

“Heck, I’d boo, too,” Jeter said before smiling. “They’re booing a .125 hitter. I’d boo that guy, too.”