Josh Hamilton Is A Hitting Machine

Call it Home Run Derby Part II for Josh Hamilton, but Tuesday night, the Texas Bambino blasted the ever-loving cover off the ball so often Major League Baseball might have to hire a new stitching company. In crushing an all-time-record-matching four home runs, Hamilton left mouths agape and eyes blinking at the pace of an Indianapolis 500 race car because their owners couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

Josh-capades commenced early and continued throughout the Texas Rangers’ 10-3 thumping of the Baltimore Orioles. Now that we have entered an era that can be quantified as the opposite of baseball’s steroid era when it comes to tabulating homers, Hamilton’s outburst is even more greatly magnified. Five-for-five, let us repeat, four homers, and eight RBIs, means he is already the American League player of the week, if not the year.

And after that fireworks display, Hamilton is batting .406 for the season. Maybe the Rangers will worry less about offering him that contract extension now. Hamilton, a perpetually recovering alcoholic and drug addict, fell off the wagon before the season. It was suggested that his brief relapse may have cost him millions of dollars in salary as the Rangers began negotiating to keep him around rather than lose him to free agency.

It is possible that there has never been a professional athlete in baseball, football, basketball or hockey, who came so close to ruination, only to emerge as a star who still struggles daily with substance abuse addiction. Hamilton has been described as an inspiration to many who have wrestled with the same kind of demons.

Yet amazingly, despite all of the unhealthy chemicals he poured into his body and how close he came to losing everything from his life to his talent to his opportunities, Hamilton still competes at an All-Star level. No one who saw it will ever forget his display in the Home Run Derby at the 2008 All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium when he slugged 28 home runs in the first round.

That performance was beneath the glare of a bright spotlight on the big stage live and on national TV. Tuesday’s game was watched by 11,263 fans at Camden Yards. They will never forget what they saw, either.

The record for most home runs in a game was set by Bobby Lowe of the Boston Beaneaters in 1894 and it has never been surpassed. Hamilton is the 15th player to match it. The others are: Ed Delahanty, Lou Gehrig, Chuck Klein, Pat Seerey, Gil Hodges, Joe Adcock, Rocky Colavito, Willie Mays, Mike Schmidt, Bob Horner, Mark Whiten, Mike Cameron, Shawn Green, and Carlos Delgado.

There are some surprising names on that list, guys who were definitely not home-run hitters ordinarily, such as Seerey (86 career homers) and Whiten (105 career homers; he did have 12 RBIs on his big day, also equalling the record for a game). If fans were polled prior to Tuesday and they had to pick one current player who most figured to join the group, Hamilton would probably have received the nod.

Hamilton, who is 6-foot-4 and weighs 240 pounds, homered in the first, the third, the seventh and the eighth. All four homers were two-run shots. He also doubled for 18 total bases, an AL record.

“I was saying after I hit two, I’ve never hit three before, and what a blessing that was,” Hamilton said. “Then to hit four is just an awesome feeling, to see how excited my teammates got.”

A minimalist reaction for a guy who launched more objects into outer space in one night than NASA has recently. But it also figures that Hamilton knows that it is a bigger blessing that he was there to do it at all, rescued from the potential oblivion of becoming a substance abuse statistic by determination and will.

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