"Adam Dunn is talking about quitting. He's talking about it like he's been thinking about it, like it's always a possibility, a failsafe if this misery continues. And then he's talking about it like the chances of him doing it are infinitesimal because he adores baseball, even as it corrodes his sense of self. And then he's talking about it like he's not sure what he thinks, which tends to happen when a 31-year-old with 363 career home runs suddenly forgets how to hit a baseball.

"If I'm not having fun anymore, I'll go home," Dunn told Yahoo! Sports. "Flat out. I'll go home. I mean that. Swear to goodness. I'll. Go. Home. I enjoy playing. Even though I suck. Or have been sucking. I enjoy playing the game. Love it. But as soon as I lose that, I'm gone, dude. It's true.

"How many games can you play doing this? This is ridiculous. You get to a point, and you're like …"

Dunn pauses. When he's trying to explain how it's 10 days from August and he's still batting .158, he runs out of things to say and lets ellipses fill in the blanks. He is in the first year of a four-year, $56 million contract with the Chicago White Sox, who signed him as a free agent to bat fourth as designated hitter, and if the season ended today he'd own the worst average in the live-ball era by more than 20 points. When the depth of Dunn's agony seems to have reached its nadir, he goes hitless and realizes that sports are an unforgiving profession. Being a millionaire comes with consequences.

Self-awareness helps Dunn deal with them. Even though this season has been, as he puts it, "the most difficult thing of my life," he's not yet at the point where failure has sucked the fun out of playing. He doesn't skulk around the White Sox's clubhouse. He doesn't loll in corners and bury his face in an iPad. He doesn't plant his 6-foot-6, 285-pound body on the bench and bemoan the disappearance of his prodigious left-handed power.

Even if he talks about quitting, he cannot imagine taking the leap.

"It's not going to happen," he says. "Zero chance. Zero. You can't get this competition anywhere else, dude. I don't care where you look. Nowhere else. It's one-on-one, dude. And you can't find that anywhere. …

"There's two ways to do it. You can sit and pout and 'why me,' or you can say we've got 60 or 70 or 80 games left to start your year. For two months, be the best player in the league. And if I can do that, we're going to win a lot of games. I'm blessed with that kind of attitude, and thank God, because I don't know what I'd be doing. I know some people the big man upstairs wouldn't do this to because there would be some bad things happening.""