Josh Hamilton's career is probably over, and you better tip your hat
Barely anyone was at the ballpark that night the former drug addict - and, possibly at that moment, the best baseball player on the planet - hit four home runs.
Even though the Baltimore Orioles got off to a blistering start that season, going 19-10 over their first 29 games, only 11,263 fans came to see them host the Texas Rangers on May 8, 2012, the night Josh Hamilton was a god.
In the top of the first inning at Camden Yards, Hamilton went deep off Jake Arrieta, depositing a hanging breaking ball over the wall in center. Two innings later, he went oppo-taco off Arrieta for another two-run homer. The Orioles brought in a lefty to face him in the seventh, but Hamilton took that guy yard, too. The same fate then befell Darren O'Day, who served up Hamilton's fourth homer of the game in the following inning.
(Courtesy: MLB.com)
In more than a century of Major League Baseball, only 15 other players have hit four home runs in a game, but Hamilton was decidedly deferential following his historic performance.
"Just seeing how excited my teammates were, then touching home plate and going into the dugout, the reaction from them was the best part," Hamilton said afterward. "Getting hugs ... those are the guys you go out and battle with every day."
He continued: "It doesn't always work out, but we give it everything we got."
Ain't that the truth, man.
Now, five years later, and one month before his 36th birthday, Hamilton's career is, sadly, probably over. On Friday, the Rangers released him from his minor-league contract, itself a charitable gesture more than anything, because his relentlessly uncooperative right knee needs yet another surgery. It's amazing, frankly, that he refused to give in to his barking knees years ago. He hasn't been able to hit for a while now, and he's had his knees operated on almost a dozen times. Most people wouldn't consider walking to the store, let alone trying to hack it in the big leagues, after 11 knee surgeries. Most people aren't Josh Hamilton, though.
His story has been bandied about on talk shows and game broadcasts and sports pages for almost a decade, but nobody could possibly tire of hearing it. A prodigy of unreasonable talent, with a swing that evoked comparisons to Ken Griffey Jr. and an arm that fired 96-mph seeds off the mound, Hamilton, a North Carolina boy, went first overall to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the 1999 amateur draft, and signed - getting a $3.96-million bonus - two days later. Within two years, he emerged as the game's consensus top prospect, but his meteoric ascent was derailed after he started experimenting with drugs and alcohol. Over the next few years, Hamilton developed an addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine and nearly lost it all. He was destitute, withering away, and got banned from baseball from 2003-2005 for multiple failed drug tests. Almost four years removed from his last professional game, though, in 2006, a clean Hamilton came back, getting assigned to the Devil Rays' Low-A affiliate. He didn't play much, but the troubled outfielder showed enough promise in his limited time on the field to get the Chicago Cubs to pluck him from Tampa Bay in the Rule 5 draft. That meant, even after getting traded to the Cincinnati Reds, a roster spot in the big leagues. He had his shot. You know what happened next.
In Cincinnati, the 26-year-old rookie vindicated the scouts who raved about his tools all those years before, hitting .292/.368/.554 (131 OPS+) with 19 homers and 17 doubles in his first 90 MLB games. He was a burgeoning star, but the Reds, needing pitching, decided to trade him to Texas following his auspicious rookie season for right-hander Edinson Volquez. There, back in the south, Hamilton thrived. Over the next half-decade with the Rangers, Hamilton cemented himself among baseball's elite, compiling more WAR (22.2) from 2008-2012 than all but three players, while averaging a .912 OPS with 28 homers and 31 doubles per season. He earned five All-Star appearances and the 2010 American League MVP, and eventually parlayed his success into a mammoth, five-year contract with the Los Angeles Angels.
In spite of everything, Hamilton made it. And that, really, is why we love Hamilton, and celebrated his triumphs so fiercely, regardless of team allegiances. Unlike, say, Albert Pujols, a paragon of steely efficiency, or Mike Trout, a cyborg engineered for excellence, Hamilton was a superstar of dizzying humanity. Like them, he was impossibly talented, of course, but he was also real and flawed, like the rest of us; capable of squandering his natural gifts at any moment because nine-figure contracts and MVP awards don't offer immunity from addiction.
Rightly or wrongly, nobody ever talked about Hamilton without at least alluding to his drug problem, because omitting that vital detail would be a disservice to his remarkable story. "That dude with the four home runs? Yeah, back in the day he tried to kill himself after pissing away almost $4 million on booze and crack." It may have been insensitive, even cruel, for pundits and fans to belabor his dark past, but it also served to remind people of the challenges he continued to face even after getting sober. Five months before that unforgettable night in Baltimore, he relapsed on alcohol; he played 148 games that summer and finished fourth in the majors in OPS (.930). Hamilton is perseverance incarnate, resolve with regrettable tattoos, and though his body gave out on him years ago - since the start of 2013, Hamilton has played only 290 MLB games, putting up a .255 average and .720 OPS - he wasn't down to acquiesce. He didn't give in when addiction ravaged his dopamine centers, so he damn sure isn't giving in because his knees hurt.
That's why we smiled instead of rolling our eyes when Hamilton, cut by the team that gave him a $114.33-million contract only a few years earlier, sheepishly came back to Texas on a minor-league deal this winter even when everyone, Hamilton included, knew he probably wasn't taking another major-league at-bat. You've got no soul, man, if you didn't pump your fist when the Rangers decided to bring him back just to bring him back.
"Josh will forever hold a place in Rangers history as one of the most talented, charismatic and productive players to wear our uniform," general manager Jon Daniels said Friday. We wish him all the best in his upcoming recovery, and with his family."
It's likely, of course, that Hamilton never recovers to the point where he can play Major League Baseball again. When that day comes, and the routine and support infrastructure of professional baseball vanish, his resolve will be tested once again. Still, Hamilton, a father of four girls, will have plenty to live for, to be accountable for, once he finally calls it quits. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, they say, but even if Hamilton's post-playing career does have some speed bumps, rest assured he'll attack his demons with the same tenacity that took him, strung out on drugs, from a derelict tattoo parlor to the World Series.
It doesn't always work out, after all, but he gives it everything he's got.