Even a single taste of greatness produces a natural high equaled only by any subsequent, equivalent taste of failure producing a natural low that can sting far deeper than the high could elevate. Prolonged greatness shoved aside by prolonged failure lacerates deeper.

And as often as not the ache to reclaim former greatness becomes a burden, if not an addiction, whose lack of consummation harries men and women of all manner of character to the rack of their regrets in a manner as cruel as it can be enduring.

Today’s unexpected champion becomes thrown back tomorrow to the pool of the ordinary, just as readily as today’s unexpected failure or journeyman may be thrown unexpectedly into the pool of the giants. And it’s still rare enough that a man who’s tumbled from particular heights to particular nightmarish depths allows himself the stripping of his professional guard enough to cry out from his unique wilderness.

Chris Davis, the Orioles’ first baseman/designated hitter, became such a man late this week. Davis has fallen from being one of the American League’s marquee sluggers to a man about whom the term “journeyman” can’t begin to describe without injury the depth to which he has fallen so publicly.

He is the Orioles’ highest paid player, based on his former glories and with three years left on his mammoth deal. You would have to presume him inhuman if he didn’t believe to his soul that he wasn’t earning what he’s paid. Yet until this week Davis was also elevated in the minds of fans who appreciate the war within such a man and the courage required to refuse its consumption of his soul.

Earlier this season he ended an unconscionable hitless game streak with the eyes of a nation upon him for the grace he’d exhibited under such futility’s lash, whacking a two-run single that brought loud cheering even in the enemy ballpark in which he drilled the hit. And it was merely the first of three hits he’d collect, and the first two of four runs he’d drive in on the evening.

But Davis since that night has had yet another season in hell parallel to that of his team’s, apparently lost for resolving himself as a player. He’s long past being an everyday player; his season’s salary is a quarter of the Orioles’ season’s payroll; his pride is compromised even deeper than his play.

At long enough last his personal dam yielded to a flood Wednesday night, after he couldn’t perform a somewhat routine scoop of a low infield throw in the fifth inning, in the middle of the Orioles being blown out by the Yankees, 14-2.

When the teams changed sides, there was Davis in a furious verbal showdown with his manager Brandon Hyde, who may have ignited the flood with a remark to Davis and answered his battered first baseman in kind for one and all to see. It was caught on camera and only too widely discussed and disseminated.

Orioles fans knew Hyde in his first season of major league managing had all he could think about trying to foster accountability and navigate the roiled waters of a mediocre team. But if he intended to call Davis out over the error alone, or the full year’s shortfall, Hyde may have underestimated just how painfully self aware Davis must be of his own deflation.

And the day after, Davis was extensively apologetic for having let his season long frustration, interrupted only rarely, and perhaps an extension of two previous years’ unexpected and barely explainable futility, explode as on Wednesday.

I think it’s pretty obvious the offensive struggles I’ve had for quite some time. I feel like night in and night out, I’ve done a real good job of still being there on defense and trying to pick guys up, and at that spot in the game, at that point in the series, that was kind of where it all . . . like I said, I hit a breaking point.

. . . [W]hen you have that much frustration, when you’re constantly having to deal with failure, you’re gonna have episodes where you just have to let it out. Unfortunately, it was in the dugout. I wish it hadn’t been. I wish it had been underneath [in the clubhouse tunnel], but it happened, and I can’t go back and change that.

His temporary fortune was the Orioles having an off-day Thursday, enabling Davis to take succor from his wife and young children, the most immediate and mandatory place for a husband and father to regain comfort after a too-long-protracted bad year on the job.

That’s really the only way that I know kind of how to escape, is just to be a dad, and be a husband. I enjoyed the time with them, but I look forward to coming back in there and getting back to work with these guys.

And when he returned to his place of business Friday, rejoining the Orioles to open a weekend series against the American League West-owning Astros, against whom he won’t play Friday night, Davis approached the boss post haste.

We sat down today and talked, I don’t know, over an hour. That’s just kind of when it all went down, I guess. We both knew that we had an off day. I think it was probably best that we did, just to kind of give us a little bit of time. I didn’t think about it a whole lot. I tried not to. I think he was kind of in the same boat. When we’re not here and we’re not in uniform, we’re not working, we’re just regular human beings. I think he took a little time away from everything just to relax.

Hyde’s own short public remarks immediately after the Wednesday night dam burst offered no indication that he would hold it against Davis, which makes Davis fortunate enough when you allow that in non-public professions such explosions after such protracted internal anguish gain as much unemployment as empathy for the frustrated.

Davis specifies that Wednesday culminated “the last couple of weeks” worth of shortfall and its accompanying discomfort, but you could not blame him if it proved to culminate the last couple of seasons worth. You may consider him fortunate to have tasted greatness at all and remind yourself of those who’ve tasted far more brief such greatness without the prior and subsequent ordinariness or failure breaking them in half.

Stronger men than Davis get crushed beneath the wheel of failure that rolls upon them unexpectedly after they know even a fast flicker of greatness. Weaker men than him triumph on the job yet claim that their only and transient success in a mortal life that does not live by profession alone.

The Baltimore Sun‘s venerable baseball columnist Peter Schmuck suggests Davis’s frustration may prompt him to think of negotiating a buyout of the rest of his contract. It may not be an option to which either Davis or the Orioles are immune.