Josh Livingston began his first season with Wichita State baseball in a terrible hitting slump that he said left him with numerous sleepless nights. At the end of April, Livingston was hitting .196 with five home runs and 17 strikeouts. He struggled to stay in the lineup.
Now a senior, Livingston is thankful he went through the slump.
He ended last year scorching hot in May, going 11-33 over the last nine games of the year. That included a run of four homers over his five games in the American Athletic Conference (AAC) Tournament.
“At the end of the day, I’m big on preparation and that giving me confidence, working extremely hard to feel comfortable and confident at the plate,” Livingston said. “At the beginning of the year, obviously, I didn’t get off to a good start. But no matter what happened … I treated every day as if I was going to play every day.”
It wasn’t the first time Livingston went through a big slump. During his freshman year at Crowder College, a junior college in Missouri, Livingston earned eight hits over his first 21 at-bats of the season, good for a .380 average.
Then, he went 0-4 with four strikeouts in a game against Iowa Western Community College. It was his first time ever reaching that ignominious feat.
“And ever since that moment, I was never the same player that season,” Livingston said. “I lost all my confidence in the fall and into the beginning of the spring.”
The statistics back up his assessment. Livingston hit just .238 the rest of the way, eventually getting benched.
But the next year, he came back to become a National Junior College Athletic Association
(NJCAA) Third Team All-American. He used that experience as a frame of reference during his slump as a Shocker.
“You’re like, ‘I know I can do it because I have done it before,’” Livingston said.
It didn’t make going through the slump any easier, though.
“It’s a lot of wishing you would have done something else or something different,” Livingston said. “You know, hoping that, like, one day it’s going to click. You’re waiting to wake up one day and like, ‘This is the day where it’s all going to happen.’”
One day, it did. Livingston came into the final regular season game against the University of Memphis on a three-game hitting streak, but not having truly regained his form.
He stepped into the plate in the bottom of the seventh inning with the Shockers behind, 7-5. Memphis brought in a left-handed pitcher to face the lefty Livingston, a matchup he had struggled with all season. He vividly described what happened next.
“I got to two strikes, and I hit a curveball for a grand slam,” Livingston said. “And that’s kind of when I was like, ‘Okay, now I feel good. I feel confident, (and) what I thought I could do, I’m doing now.’ And so that was kind of the moment … where the confidence really clicked.”
Livingston said breaking the slump was a “big weight off my shoulder.” But in hindsight, he’s glad he went through it.
“Anytime I’ve ever had struggles in my life in baseball, I’ve always come out on the better side of it,” Livingston said. “And so I’m looking forward to using that kind of as motivation and helping me to (have) a better start … this year.”
WSU head coach Brian Green said Livingston is one of the best hitters on the Shockers’ roster.
“Josh Livingston is hammering the ball right now,” Green said. “His rhythm is great at the plate.”
Livingston was named to the preseason AAC All-Conference team, although he said he doesn’t put much weight on that when the season actually starts. Instead, Livingston has prided himself on becoming a leader off the field.
“I want people to look back and think, ‘I learned a lot from Josh,’” Livingston said. “‘I learned how to do this. I learned how to work hard, or how to schedule, learned how to eat right,’ like, anything like that. Those legacy-wise, are way more important to me than the athletes on the field. I want to leave a better impact than I found it.”
