Beyond Belief (25 page)

Carrying a bag of beer from the clubhouse to the bus might seem like a minor concession for me to make, but it didn’t feel right. I told my teammate I couldn’t do it. I told him I wasn’t making any judgment about guys having a few beers on a plane flight, but I didn’t think it would be a good idea for me to be seen carrying a bag of beer onto a bus or a plane.

“How is it going to look if somebody takes a picture of me while I’m carrying a bag of beer,” I said. “I really don’t want to risk that.”

He was cool about it. Everyone seemed to understand, and I wasn’t asked to do it again. I’m sensitive about how I’m viewed, and that incident was a reminder that I am a little different, that there are limits to how much I can be “one of the boys.”

Beyond that, my first road trip caused me some trepidation. Mostly, it was another trip into the unknown. I knew the reception from visiting fans wouldn’t be as friendly and welcoming as it was in Cincinnati, and I thought and prayed long and hard for the strength and the wisdom to be able to handle myself in the right way. In the end, I decided I had to be myself, to continue to be honest and forthright with everyone, to own up to my mistakes and allow people to make their own judgments.

In St. Louis, I stood in the outfield at Busch Stadium between innings, playing catch with the left fielder. I expected heckling in the visiting ballparks, and I wasn’t disappointed. There was one guy in the bleachers who was really giving it to me, and for his big finish he yelled, “My name is Josh Hamilton and I’m a drug addict.”

I smiled a little and looked up at him. I spread my arms out wide and raised my palms to the sky.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said.

Immediately, the fans around him started cheering and laughing. The guy seemed stunned initially, probably shocked and maybe embarrassed that I had called his bluff, but then he recovered and said, “Dude, you’re my new favorite player.”

I learned how to handle the hecklers, and they weren’t all as easy as that guy in St. Louis. I heard everything, from chants of “crackhead” to people telling me to snort the foul lines. From the tone of their voices and the harshness — or playfulness — of their words, I learned which hecklers I could play around with and which I needed to ignore.

My theory was simple: Most of the people with the anger and viciousness in their voices were the ones who had been hurt the most by addiction. I didn’t take it personally. I knew they weren’t angry at me but at the helplessness and sorrow that comes from being trapped in a situation they perceive as being hopeless. They lashed out at me because they had a brother or a mother or a friend who couldn’t escape addiction. Maybe they were the ones who were struggling, and seeing me on the baseball field having a good time, free of my personal torture, hurt them in some way that caused them to direct their anger at me.

It’s not something I can easily describe, but I could always tell when someone unleashing a stream of nastiness from the stands was using me to shield themselves from their own pain. I knew I couldn’t turn and address those people the way I did the guy in St. Louis, but their words and the venom behind them sent chills down my spine.

As I said every chance I got, nobody can say or do anything to me that comes close to the damage I did to myself. I believe I can handle the anger from the people who feel the need to use words to bring me down, but I wonder: Can they?

On the field, the adjustment to the big-league level was smoother than I had anticipated. There were problems — my baserunning wasn’t up to my standards, and I could look foolish on good offspeed pitches — but there were moments when I felt like I did in high school, when my natural ability and instincts took over.

My first hit and first home run came on the same pitch, from Edgar Gonzalez of the Arizona Diamondbacks on our first road trip. I hit two home runs in a game against the Colorado Rockies. Before word spread about my arm, teams tested me and I responded by throwing out runners at third and at the plate. Even though this was trial by fire, I started well enough to be named the National League Rookie of the Month for April.

My favorite baseball moment — better than a home run — comes when I find myself camping under a fly ball in center field and a runner at third is tagging up to try to score. This moment is the best, filled with anticipation and excitement. As I wait for the ball to settle into my glove, my body slightly behind the ball as I prepare to catch it as my body heads toward home plate, I envision the throw lasering over the infield about six feet off the ground and hitting the catcher’s mitt a split-second before the runner begins his slide.

Against Cleveland, that scenario played out perfectly and I threw out a runner at the plate to complete a double play. That, combined with a throw I made to third base on another fly ball to get the Rockies’ Willy Taveras — one of the fastest players in the game — made teams stop challenging my arm. I appreciated the compliment, but I missed the excitement.

This was on-the-job training. Before every game, I would ask about that day’s pitcher; given my bizarre path to the big leagues, there was little chance I had ever faced him at any level. I usually asked two simple questions: 1) What does he throw? and 2) How fast is his fastball?

Armed with the answers to those two questions, I thought I could go up to the plate with enough knowledge to be able to react to speed and movement. I wouldn’t be looking for a curve from a guy who only throws a slider, and I wouldn’t be surprised by a 95 mph fastball. Part of hitting for me is making up my own mind and not being overly concerned about what a certain pitcher throws. I’ve learned to study pitchers more, and to use the ridiculous amount of resources available to me at the big-league level, but I usually find that if I’ve got my mind and body right at the plate, I’m going to be able to hit whatever comes my way.

The trick to the game, of course, is getting the mind and body right on a consistent basis. This was the biggest adjustment I had to make after not playing baseball regularly for nearly four years. The everyday grind of the big-league season wore on me a little bit, partly because I had played so many games during spring training. There were times when I felt the toll of the years of abusing my body. I was quicker to tire and more susceptible to colds and other infections.

The doctors told me I had done damage to my immune system, damage they couldn’t adequately assess at this point. My system was compromised by all those years of attacking it with corrosive drugs and alcohol. I abused my body for years, and I don’t know how I kept from destroying it completely. Some lingering effects were to be expected, whether I liked it or not.

So in late May I woke up violently ill in a Cleveland hotel room. I was throwing up repeatedly and felt so weak I had to work hard to get to the phone and call Johnny to get me some help.

Johnny came straight to my room, took one look at me, and said, “I think we might need an ambulance.” He called the trainer and he agreed. They got me out of the hotel and into a Cleveland hospital, where they diagnosed me as having gastroenteritis.

I knew what everybody was thinking:
Uh-oh, did Josh relapse?

It was normal to wonder, especially for those people who didn’t know I was drug-tested three times a week, home and away, and would be tossed out of baseball the second a test turned up dirty.

But it was inevitable that a late-night/early-morning trip by ambulance to the hospital would stir up rumors and assumptions. I understand that, and I expect that. My past invites that.

I was released from the hospital the next day, after I’d been filled with enough IV fluids to combat the dehydration. From there, Johnny drove me back to Cincinnati. On the way, he was on the phone constantly with everyone in my family, all of them wondering what happened to me. They didn’t ask directly, but I knew what they were really asking: Should we prepare ourselves for another letdown?

Johnny assured them I was sick — just sick and not drug-sick or hangover-sick or any other kind of sick. Just pretty darned sick.

By the second day after I got sick, about the time I started feeling better, the Reds had decided to place me on the fifteen-day disabled list. Since this condition usually lasts two or three days, it was unusual for someone to be placed on the disabled list because of it. True, I understand that I am prone to get worse bouts of common bugs and have them last longer. Still, I was sensitive to the perceptions of others and wondered if this would fuel more speculation.

It did, and some of it came from the team’s broadcasters, who wondered aloud on the air whether there was something more going on with me. I felt frustrated by this, since the team could have gotten out in front of it and made it clear that the testing plan — three times a week — provided all the answers anybody needed.

Mostly, I just wanted to play. The Reds weren’t picked to be much of a factor in the National League Central, mainly because the bullpen was suspect, but I wanted to be on the field to help the team. The team said the decision to place me on the disabled list was to allow me to recharge my battery, since I had played an unusually large number of innings in spring training after being idle for so many years. That was legitimate, and I accepted that. Had it come earlier it might have kept all the speculation from getting started.

Instead, I was sent to Triple A Louisville to rehab. One of the trips we made was to Durham to play the Devil Rays’ Triple A affiliate. This was a homecoming for me, and the Raleigh paper trumpeted my return. I didn’t really want to be on a rehab assignment, but this trip was worthwhile.

Before the game, as I was walking toward the dugout, I saw the firefighter friend of my brother’s. He was with his son, the boy I had pulled out of class and taken to the baseball field to talk a little bit about decisions and temptations.

His dad shook my hand first, then the boy. They thanked me for taking the time to talk to him. The boy had graduated from high school and was now playing junior-college baseball. He looked good, and his dad said he was doing well.

When we left, I could tell the boy wanted to say something but was a little tongue-tied. I loitered for a second or two to let him collect his thoughts.

“Thanks, Josh,” he said. “Thanks for helping me see another side.”

The encouragement I had received from Michael Barrett before that first at bat became a theme. I was overwhelmed by the number of players and umpires and other baseball people who knew my story and took the time to offer me their support.

As Katie said, way back when it wasn’t fashionable to say it, this would be bigger than baseball.

In a game in mid-May, I was walking to the plate to lead off an inning when the catcher jogged to the mound to have a word with his pitcher. As they were talking, the home-plate umpire, whom I will not name, walked around to brush off home plate.

I was smoothing the dirt in the batter’s box with my feet, and I could see the plate didn’t need to be cleaned. The umpire bent over with his brush in his hand and looked up at me.

“Josh, I’m really pulling for you,” he said. “I’ve fought some battles myself, and I just want you to know I’m rooting for you.”

My comeback had blurred so many lines and brought together so many different people, and now it had broken through the sacred separation between umpires and players. Obviously, we talk and joke and argue with umpires, but rarely does an umpire admit to openly rooting for a ballplayer.

In another setting, I would have shaken the man’s hand and told him to be strong. In this setting, however, that probably wouldn’t have been a good idea.

I nodded and thanked him instead.

Another time I hit a double against the Houston Astros, and as I was standing at the bag waiting for the next hitter, Astros second baseman Craig Biggio came over to talk.

“I’m proud of you, man,” he said. “I understand what you’re going through. Stay strong. I wish I could have done more for Cammie, but nobody could change him. I just want you to know I’m rooting for you.”

“Cammie” was Ken Caminiti, Biggio’s former teammate with the Astros and the National League MVP with the Padres in 1996. Caminiti battled the same demons as me, but he couldn’t overcome them. He left baseball after the 2001 season and died in New York City on October 10, 2004, of a heart attack caused by an overdose of cocaine and opiates.

That could have been me. I know that, and Biggio knew that. When Caminiti died, everyone wondered how he could have allowed himself to reach the position where he died in a grimy section of the Bronx, hanging out with crackheads and other dead-end people.

People in so-called polite society looked at the money and fame he accumulated as a ballplayer and couldn’t understand how he could lose it all. His problems were well documented — he went to rehab for alcohol and admitted cocaine and steroid use — but still there was a collective shock at the way he died.

From the outside, it appeared Caminiti had everything. How could he end up the way he did, and where he did? Easy — he had an addiction that took control of his life. What happened to Ken Caminiti could easily have happened to me. Addiction took away huge chunks of his life — wife, children, baseball — and left him with nothing but a jones for the next high. Addiction is a tornado, clearing everything in its path.

I understand what happened to Caminiti, because it happened to me. Nobody could understand how I could end up hanging out in a trailer park outside Raleigh with a bunch of people who never had anything and made their way through life by taking advantage of people and helping them ruin their lives.

But hey — that’s where I was, the $4 million man who was considered the best high school baseball player ever. The first position player drafted number one out of high school since Alex Rodriguez. The next Mickey Mantle. But none of that could stop me from wanting, needing, and getting drugs.

The only thing that stopped me was turning my life over to the Lord and realizing I was no longer in control of my destiny. Once I surrendered, I was able to see the world more clearly and gradually resume living. Sadly, Ken Caminiti never got that chance.