There was one question on everybody’s mind after the first round of the home run derby – from people who don’t follow baseball to those
who only do so casually – just who in the world is Josh Hamilton?
After all, the talk leading up to the home run derby was primarily about the players who chose not to participate in the fan favorite event. New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez was too busy playing prima donna to hit a few home runs on his home field. All-time home run leader Barry Bonds can’t even find a major league team to take him at the veteran’s minimum.
Then, as magically as his dream foretold, Hamilton put on a show that baseball fans will be talking about for a very long time. In the house that Ruth built, in the last year Yankee Stadium will exist in its current form, Hamilton laid the foundation for the post-steroids era.
Let’s face it; this year’s all-star game was supposed to be a game that the casual baseball fan didn’t care about. Baseball was at a crossroads between the stars of the steroids-era-past and the young, talented players that had yet to breach mainstream stardom.
Or so we all thought. Hamilton blasted 28 home runs in the first round of the home run derby, surpassing the Bobby Abreu mark of 24 set back in 2005. The average length of each of his home runs was an astounding 445 feet, with three landing beyond 500 feet.
Hamilton would eventually lose in the finals to Justin Morneau, but as Hamilton would probably agree, sometimes the beauty is in the process. You see, a few years ago Hamilton was banned from Major League Baseball for substance abuse and was an admitted drug addict. The 1999 first overall pick was walking down a dangerous path and slowly wasting away, quite literally at points.
Eventually, however, he would get his life back together. After a vivid dream in which he says Jesus helped him fight off the devil, Hamilton started to get clean. The MLB would eventually reinstate him, and in 2007 the Cincinnati Reds drafted him.
Which brought us to Monday night, when a 27-year-old who two years earlier had a dream of being interviewed at a home run derby at Yankee Stadium, stepped to the plate and had all of us asking just who the heck Josh Hamilton is? He didn’t have the name recognition of previous home run derby notables like Jason Giambi, Sammy Sosa or Mark McGwire, but he left with one of the most remarkable stories you’ll ever hear in sports: the story of a troubled man who struggled in his life and managed to defy the odds.
A man who overcame addiction and literally lived his dream, in the process helping rebuild the tarnished image of baseball in the aftermath of the Barry Bonds’ and Jose Canseco’s of the past. Maybe this year’s all-star festivities weren’t what we expected them to be, but they were better than any of us, with the exception of Hamilton, could have ever dreamt they would be.
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