Mr. Feel Good

So a lot has been brought up recently regarding a surprising Triple Crown Candidate, and I don’t mean the horse. Josh Hamilton is absolutely tearing up Major League Baseball this season and through the first two months of the season is atop all three Triple Crown Categories (Batting Average, RBI, HR). Every year someone gets insanely hot to start the year and then fades away with minimal press coverage. Perhaps, expectations for this feat have plummeted due to the fact that the last Triple Crown winner was 41 years ago. Today, with smaller surface area to hit to and fresher, harder throwing pitchers to hit against, hitting for average and power has become a lot harder to do.

It’s not so much Hamilton’s numbers that make this a good story but the way he got to where he was today. For those of you who don’t know his story, I ask you to come out from under your rock and search his name. Within the last 2 weeks every major sports site / magazine has done a feature on him. In summary, Hamilton was the former #1 pick in the 1999 draft that had been compared as the best pure talent since Alex Rodriguez. He was a 6 tool prospect with a 96 mph fastball at age 17 and not even a hint of an attitude problem. However, spending time off the field and alone caught up to him, leading to a battle many don't win. From 2001 - 2004, Hamilton battled drug and alcohol addiction and fought back from a ban from baseball to give us the topic covered so in depth today.

I’m going to distance myself from being just another blogger praising the personal and athletic achievements of Hamilton. In no way am I trying to discount what Josh Hamilton has done as anything but incredible. However, it is a broader image that sticks out whenever I read a story about him. Baseball is currently engulfed in the biggest self cast shadow since the gambling issues of the past. Cast above every achievement today in any sport is the topic of Performance Enhancing Drugs, or PEDs. Today, any athlete who rises from relative obscurity is suspected of using PEDs before being praised for individual achievements. The Mitchell Report was an “I told you so” report that has cast an especially darker shadow over baseball. As a result, skepticism today is off the charts. It is for this reason that Hamilton’s feat can be so much more than a personal comeback. It could quite possibly be the redeeming grace of a very dark time in baseball. You see, due to Josh Hamilton’s mistakes, he is currently the only player in Major League Baseball required to submit to drug tests 3 times a week.

Imagine a player hitting for power and average, running with speed and covering the largest outfield in the AL for 81 games a year. Now, imagine them achieving something that hasn’t been achieved in 41 years without doubting the influence of HGH. For that reason, I have planted both feet firmly on the Josh Hamilton bandwagon. As a result, with the 22nd round pick in my fantasy draft this March, I took the center fielder for the Texas Rangers who was formally addicted to drugs. The same ex-drug addict who could not only give me bragging rights for the biggest steal in the history of my fantasy league, but save the state of baseball as well. All with the sun shining brightly above him, not a shadow in the sky. That, to me, is the proverbial icing on this cake.