I moved to Raleigh, North Carolina in the summer of 1999. A few months prior to that the Tampa Bay Devil Rays selected a five-tool animal out of Athens Drive High School in Raleigh--a kid by the name of Josh Hamilton. Hamilton, a wizard on the field, was hitting a staggering .525 in 25 games as a senior and his fastball was rumored to be in the upper nineties. The Devil Rays had no choice but to take this talent--the first high schooler taken first overall since Alex Rodriguez. He played one successful season in the minor leagues, hitting a combined .301 across three different leagues. Hamilton was on the rise and the Devil Rays couldn't have been happier.
The meteoric rise of Hamilton through the baseball ranks was only matched by the speed of his downfall. After a severe car accident with his parents left him with back issues and too much time on his hands, he began to frequent a tattoo parlor in the Tampa area. With little to no supervision, an 18-year-old was left with an almost $4 million signing bonus and nothing to do. He began to experiment with alcohol and drugs, picking up 26 tattoos in the process. He became a specter of himself, still playing baseball, but without the same enthusiasm. The Devil Rays noticed and sent him to rehab, beginning a spiral of attempted comebacks and failed drug tests that led to him being out of baseball all together. But in 2007, the Cincinnati Reds took him in the Rule 5 Draft (supplemental) and he was a different person.
Hamilton flew out of the gate at spring training in 2007, acting as one of the team's best hitters and playing centerfield after the incomparable Ryan Freel went down (quick aside: Ryan Freel was a fantastic baseball player and though I know next to nothing about his personal life, his suicide and connection chronic traumatic encephlopathy or CTE and the lack of coverage regarding it is a tragedy). Hamilton was named the NL Rookie of the Month for the month of April and we hadn't seen anything yet.
After a trade to the Rangers, Hamilton's star blossomed. In 2008, he was one of the best hitters in baseball and still a great defensive player. There had been no behavioral issues and the Rangers' organization thought they had found a gem. Hamilton was selected to start in the MLB All-Star game and in the Home Run Derby that year and he did not disappoint.
On that warm night in July, in the hallowed grounds of old Yankee Stadium, Josh Hamilton put on an absolute clinic.
This video is his first round--where he hit a record-breaking 28 home runs. It's 22 minutes long--22 minutes of a player finally seeing potential realized, 22 minutes of pure, unadulterated wonder at the skill this man was displaying. We thought we were watching the best player we had ever seen, except he was already 27.
In 2009, the baseball world was put on notice of Hamilton, but a few injuries derailed most of his season. It was also his first documented account of a relapse, as a story came out about him being at a bar during the All-Star break. He apologized for the relapse and all was well. In 2010, Hamilton set the world on fire, hitting .359 and beating the brakes off of the Yankees in the ALCS to send his Rangers to the World Series. They didn't win, but Hamilton was voted the league MVP.
After a few more great seasons with the Rangers, Hamilton headed to the Angels as part of a three-headed monster of him, Albert Pujols, and one Mike Trout. He had a decent first season there, but in 2014 the wheels fell off. He hit .261, actually better than he had the year before, but he only contributed 10 homers and 44 RBIs. He also struggled through what was perhaps the worst playoff series a modern player has had, going 0-13 against Kansas City in the ALDS. In February of the following year, it was determined that Hamilton had a relapse with both cocaine and alcohol, leading to an extremely strange situation in which he did not get suspended, but the Angels used every trick in the book to get out from underneath his contract. In a move of desperation, the Angels took Hamilton's contract on the chin as a sunk cost to get him out of town and moved him back to the Rangers. After looking like he was back to his normal self, his struggles returned in the postseason. He's currently the owner of the second longest hitless streak in MLB postseason history at 31 at-bats. He opened the 2016 season on the DL and soon had season-ending knee surgery which led to his release a this past week.
So how do we see Josh Hamilton? For some years, he was seen as wasted talent, a cautionary tale of what can happen when a young player has too much money and nothing to do. After that, he was an absolute American icon, Paul Bunyan with a baseball bat. He mashed home runs like Babe Ruth and fielded his position like Willie Mays. Off the field, he was an addict, a man of god, someone who used his story to teach people. He was a father and a husband and a ballplayer, a damn good one at that. He had some of the greatest seasons in baseball history, but his story is also one of the saddest. His legacy will forever be complicated as his play on the field cannot be separated from the horrors he faced off of it.
*All stats from Baseball Reference.com
