There are two sides to Hamilton story

[The Entertainer]

[quote][b][size=3]There's another side to Hamilton story[/size][/b]
By Steve Phillips
Special to ESPN.com


The Josh Hamilton story is a great one. Good for him. It is nice to see Hamilton overcome his demons and start to thrive again. Baseball is a game of redemption; when you fail there is always a chance to bounce back. He is making the most of his second chance, and I hope and pray that he will keep his life together and fulfill his potential as a player. People deserve second chances. Heaven knows I have had my share.

Hamilton was selected in December's Rule 5 draft by the Cubs and traded to the Reds, which means that he must stay in the major leagues for the Reds to keep him. Otherwise, he will have to go through waivers and ultimately be offered back to the Devil Rays, his original team. What an opportunity for him. He has only played 15 minor league games in the past four seasons due to injuries and drug suspensions, yet he has a chance to be a big leaguer. It sounds great, but there is another side to it.

Hamilton earned a $3.96M signing bonus from the Devil Rays as the No. 1 overall pick in the 1999 draft.Every decision made by an organization impacts every other decision. Every decision makes a statement about that organization and what it believes in. Every decision sets a precedent for the next decision. On a daily basis, minor league players are instructed, developed, cultivated and directed on how to become major league players. They are told to work hard, stay committed to their careers, make good decisions, be professional, be a good teammate, etc.

The decision to acquire Hamilton and give him a chance to be a major league player without doing anything to earn it over the past four seasons makes a statement to current Reds major leaguers and especially to the organization's minor league players. This one decision contradicts everything the organization claims is important.

I am not trying to be insensitive. In fact, I am rooting for Josh Hamilton to do very well. If I was a general manager I would want him in my organization to serve as an example of redemption and perseverance. I just wouldn't have picked him in the Rule 5 draft and made the statement that he deserves to be a major leaguer right now. It sends the wrong message to all of the hardworking, dedicated young men who are paying the price to get to the major leagues. Not to mention that it sends the wrong message to Hamilton.

Maybe the organization can spin the decision and find a way to justify it to its young prospects. My experience is that ballplayers see through that. Their take will be that if you have talent, it doesn't really matter what you do or how you behave -- there is a place for you at the top. That is not the attitude that leads to championships.

Even if Hamilton develops into something more than a spring training phenom, it wouldn't change my decision about the merits of selecting him. But what's done is done, and I for one will root for his success as hard as I can because it really is a great story.

Steve Phillips, former general manager of the New York Mets, is a regular on ESPN's Baseball Tonight.[/quote]



[url="http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/spring2007/columns/story?columnist=phillips_steve&id=2792089"]ESPN.com[/url]

[The Entertainer]

[quote][size=3][b]Hamilton's Red-letter spring is made for Hollywood[/b][/size]
By Jayson Stark
ESPN.com


SARASOTA, Fla. -- Sometimes, the stories we tell aren't really baseball stories.

Sometimes, they're just the stories of human beings -- people who rise, who fall, who sadden us, who inspire us. We only use baseball as a reason to tell those tales.

So we know that if it weren't for baseball, there might be no reason to tell the story of Josh Hamilton right now. But thankfully, baseball has given us that excuse.

Josh Hamilton played 15 games in the Class A New York-Penn League last year before suffering a knee injury. Thankfully, one of the great human stories in America is suddenly unfolding in front of us, on these baseball fields beneath the Florida palm trees.

For too long, Josh Hamilton was the talk of baseball for all the wrong reasons. Now he's the talk of baseball for all the right reasons.

He has climbed out of a real-life horror film and back into the uniform of the Cincinnati Reds. And if he keeps playing the way he is playing, he is going to make the Cincinnati Reds, as your standard five-tool reserve outfielder.

He is 25 years old now. It's nearly eight years since the Devil Rays made him the first pick in the 1999 draft. There is a three-year black hole missing out of his career. And the stuff he is doing this spring, he has no business doing. But he is doing it anyway.

A week into spring training, he's batting .476 (10-for-21). He has mashed a 500-foot home run. And there isn't a National Leaguer in the state of Florida with more hits than he has (10).

So already, teammate Ryan Freel says, "he's a great story."

And he is. But not just a baseball story.

"Getting back here, it means a lot, baseball-wise," Josh Hamilton says. "But also, it's going to mean a lot when I get to tell my story to people."

He is telling that story pretty much every day now, to anyone who asks. And those of us who type for a living are all too happy to help him tell it.

It is the classic saga of the all-American boy whose life unexpectedly careens down life's darkest alley -- but then, remarkably, zigzags back in the other direction. And now here this guy is, on the cusp of doing something few humans get the chance to do:

Grabbing hold of an unspeakably tragic script and crafting a much different ending. But not on any keyboard.

In real life.

He is a walking Hollywood stand-up-and-cheer production. He is teaching us all a lesson about why we give second chances in life. And he is basking in it all.

Asked what he is savoring most about this spring of rebirth, Josh Hamilton's face takes on a look we don't get to see much -- the look of a man who knows he is living a dream he thought he'd let slip away.

"Just getting back on the field," he says. "Sunshine. Uniform on. All of it. It's so good."

So good. Too good. Too good to feel real, even. Every day seems to bring a whole new reason to ask: Is this really happening?

Imagine this scene, for instance:

Imagine our hero, driving home from a spring-training baseball game last weekend, his wife by his side, a smile on his face ... and his major league baseball uniform still on his back.

"I wore my uniform home from the game the other day," he admits. "I rode home with my wife from the Twins game and stopped at Dairy Queen, with my uniform on. And when I got home and took it off, I just looked at it."

Looked at it?

"Yeah," he says. "To take in the moment."

At the Dairy Queen, he reports, "I had the biggest burger I could get. It reminded me of being in a [American] Legion baseball game. Or high school. It's just that feeling of, it's a game. And just having fun with it."

Who would have thought a couple of years ago that this guy had many -- or any -- fun days left in anybody's baseball uniform?

Somehow, he had descended into a drug abyss from which there appeared to be no escape. He'd been suspended by baseball indefinitely, for violating the terms of his treatment program. His wife had left him. He had an infant daughter he'd barely laid eyes on. He'd pushed away all the friends who had reached out to help him.

And then he turned up on his grandmother's doorstep in September 2005. He'd lost 50 pounds. He had nowhere else to turn. She took him in and fed him, and all seemed right in his world, finally. But it wasn't. A couple of weeks later, she looked into his eyes, knew he was high and confronted him.

"She told me she couldn't take it anymore, that I was hurting the people I love," Hamilton says. "My grandmother seeing me like that -- that was the turning point."

That date was Oct. 5, 2005. It is burned into Josh Hamilton's brain, because of what it signifies. It was the day his life took the U-turn that has led him here.

There were many checkpoints along the journey back, many profound religious experiences, many people who helped, many people who cared. You'll see them all in the movie some day.

But the forces that led him to this team, in this spring, at this point in his life are so powerful, so cinematic, so packed with elements of fate and coincidence that even his teammates get chills talking about them.

"I told him, 'There's a reason why you're here. All this stuff happened for a reason,'" Freel says. "And he believes that."

Technically, Hamilton is in this Reds spring-training camp because they maneuvered to obtain him in December's Rule 5 draft of unprotected minor leaguers. But there is more going on here than the technicalities.

What were the odds that Josh Hamilton would wind up playing for a team whose manager, Jerry Narron, has known him since he was a teenager?

What were the odds that Narron's brother, Johnny, actually coached Hamilton in a summer-draft showcase setting a decade ago -- and had a son who had grown up with (and played baseball and basketball with) Hamilton, since he was (gulp) 9 years old?

And what were the odds that Reds GM Wayne Krivsky would work out a deal with the Cubs for the No. 3 pick in that Rule 5 draft before he even knew there was this connection between his manager's family and his future draft pick's family?

"The amazing thing to me," the manager says, "just by the grace of God about how all this worked out, is the night before the Rule 5 draft Wayne wanted to run it by me about drafting somebody with a past. Wayne said his name, and my jaw just dropped -- because Wayne had no idea I even knew him."

In fact, Narron -- as caring a man as you'll find in anyone's dugout -- had been beating himself up for years, just because he'd never reached out to Hamilton during those darkest days. So Narron told his GM, "If anybody can get this thing done, we can get this thing done together."

For added support, the Reds then hired Narron's brother as their new video/administrative coach. And they're committed, Johnny Narron says, "to be there for Josh, for whatever he needs ... on and off the field."

"It almost feels like my first spring training all over again. And I just thank God every day for it."
-- Josh Hamilton

So far, it has all worked out so poetically, it feels more like a fairy tale than the poignant comeback drama of a troubled young man.

This guy missed three full seasons (2003-05), remember -- and got just 50 at-bats, in a short-season league, last year. So how many players could lose that huge chunk of their career -- and still look like one of the most talented players on the field?

"I compare it to the guys who went off to World War II, missed two or three years and then came back and were able to play," Jerry Narron says. "For somebody with average ability, it would be impossible. But Josh has got much more than just average talent."

Oh, he had his doubts it was all still in there. But "at the same time," Hamilton says, "that just lets you know that it's a God thing, because to be out of baseball that long and to come back, and to still have the ability I have, it's just one of those things that lets me know that this is what I'm supposed to do."

And maybe it is. Another one of his new teammates, Jeff Conine, has watched all this with a sense of awe.

"I know if I took three years off," Conine says, "I wouldn't be able to make contact with the ball, let alone hit balls 500 feet."

It won't always come this easy, obviously. Josh Hamilton knows that. We know that. The pitchers will get serious. The breaking balls will get sharper. The word will get out. That batting average won't be pushing .500 for long. His playing time will shrink. The temptations that swayed him once will always be there.

But spring is supposed to be a time for feel-good stories. And no one in baseball has made more people feel good than Josh Hamilton.

His wife, Katie, and his two daughters sit there in the stands every day -- watching, cheering, praying. Every day, the calls, the e-mails, the text messages roll in from all the people rooting for him. And Josh Hamilton does his best to take it all in.

Asked if there has been one moment this spring when it hit him that this was really happening, he replies: "Every day. Every day."

"It almost feels like my first spring training all over again," the star of baseball's most inspirational show says. "And I just thank God every day for it."

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.[/quote]



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