Another Josh Hamilton thread

The last one got locked within 20 minutes. We'll see if this one strikes the mods' fancy a little more. If there is a general prohibition against Josh Hamilton threads, my apologies.

It appears that he's had a drug relapse:

Los Angeles Angels outfielder Josh Hamilton meeting with MLB officials about disciplinary issue - ESPN Los Angeles

Very sad. I hope he can bounce back.

 

Why was the last thread locked. Is he running for Congress ?

 

Things got pretty heated, Boom, Particularly LTL, Mizzougrad, and As the Crow Flies:

Josh Hamilton: Hall of Fame? | SportsJournalists.com

 

No ... when asked whether he believed in sabermetrics, Hamilton said, "I'm going to punt on that."

 

Looks like it was locked due to a surge in largely pointless HOF threads.

 

Dead giveaway. A true sabermetrician would almost never punt.

 

I would bet serious money that the shoulder injury/surgery had something to do with the relapse. There are a lot of instances of people who have been clean for awhile, who relapse as soon as they have to take painkillers.

I have a friend who had the same thing happen. I'm not claiming to fully understand how everything works, but he was sober seven years with seemingly no issues. He had major back surgery and months later was hooked on painkillers and back on alcohol.

 

Incredibly difficult to overcome an addiction, and that difficulty has to be multiplied 100 fold when you have the freedom, money and sycophants of a high-profile professional athlete.

 

Is that what you take from it?

 

RJ -- sober seven years? What time frame is that? He had at least one very highly publicized relapse in Texas and probably some others too.

 

Yeah.

"Let's let a guy build the career and be a little closer to the end of it before we start these discussions and end up with 20 "hall of fame" threads and their copy cats from people who think they're just HI-lar-ious (they're not) "

Anyway, I hope Hamilton finds a way to get through this. Sounds like his demons run very deep.

 

I'm more worried about his post playing days.

Structure helps, and so does having a reason to stay clean.

Once baseball is over, the structure is gone, and he's going to have a lot of free time to fill.

His marriage apparently provides some structure, but there have been problems there as well. I don't see this ending well.