I can’t say that Josh Hamilton has played his last big league game, and that’s probably not the case. But I’d have to speculate it’s now at least a possibility.
Hamilton met with MLB officials on Wednesday regarding a “disciplinary” issue and reports are that he confessed to having suffered a relapse that might have included both cocaine and alcohol use. That information has yet to be verified as this is being written, but the sources reporting the info are definitely media insiders.
Hamilton is enormously talented, but between the injuries and the addiction problems, his game has declined badly. Bluntly stated, the Josh Hamilton we saw in the second half of the 2014 season was simply not a big league caliber player.
The timing of this story is bitterly ironic. The new edition of “Real Sports” on HBO did an in depth piece on athletes that have become addicts after getting injured and having pain killers medically prescribed. This is not to suggest that everyone who takes these pills get hooked. But we now know that some people have addictive personalities and they can become dependent, even after just one dose.
Hamilton appears to fall into that unfortunate category. His introduction to pan killers came following an auto accident. The rest is history, so to speak. He’s had some terrible luck, and that tragic incident a few years back, where Hamilton tossed a souvenir baseball to a fan who fell to his death trying to catch it…wow, that’s something at another level completely.
Whether or not Josh Hamilton ever plays another inning of baseball is almost immaterial. I’ll just be hoping he’s able to overcome his latest setback so that he can enjoy his life.