A Blast from the Past: Part 2

According to Baseball America, Josh Hamilton's drug suspension is finally over. Obviously, this doesn't relate to the Cubs minor league system, but it is interesting to me because I faced Josh Hamilton years ago in high school. Josh was a sophomore when I was a senior in high school, and his Athens Drive team faced my high school, Durham Riverside a couple times.

At the time, Hamilton was probably 5'10" 160 lbs but he had the biggest feet I had ever seen on a kid his size. Like most high schoolers, we heckled the kid while he was on the mound, and his stuff wasn't extraordinary, but if memory serves he pitched decent against my school, something most teams weren't able to do (we were ranked #1 in the state for a few weeks my senior year).

A few years later, I got to see the circus that followed the future #1 overall pick in the draft when I was coaching for Durham Riverside when Hamilton's Athens Drive came to Durham to play us. Hundreds of scouts followed Hamilton's every move, from watching him warm up in the bullpen to watching him toss "soft-toss". For those of you that don't know, soft-toss is a drill will one player hits and another takes a knee directly in front of the hitter and tosses the ball to the batter. During this drill, scouts were actually writing things down, although I can't imagine what:

"Good soft-tosser"
"Excellent at under-handing"
etc
etc

Hamilton touched 97 as a left-handed pitcher that game, although the Durham Riverside leadoff batter, Byron Cherry, hit a lead-off homerun against Hamilton, Hamilton went on to shut us out the rest of the game. Hamilton also hit a monster homerun in the game showing off his bat as well to the numerous scouts.

Josh Hamilton went on to be drafted by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays with the first pick in the 1999 draft and after a decent minor league start, has had drug and emotional problems ever since, including an obsession with tattoos. Most likely Hamilton will never go on to play in the majors, but his career will be one I will follow thanks in large part to our paths crossing on the playing field.

Good luck Josh, I hope you can turn it around!