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Anyone that pays attention to baseball knows about Josh Hamilton. He was a stud coming out of high school in 1999 and was the #1 pick of that year's draft to the Devil Rays. He was supposed to be the next Ken Griffey Jr., who is one of my top five favorite players during my lifetime. Anyways, he got hurt a lot and had too much time on his hands so he decided to give booze and drugs a shot! He was hooked and his career fell into a dark hole - never to be heard of again, except for the fact it seemed SI or ESPN would do a story every other year tracking his downward spiral and telling the story about what could've been. He blew his $4M bonus on coke and crack and finally moved in with his grammy after his wife kicked him out. Back at that time, many players that went on to the Majors swore he was the greatest player of all time, and if not giving him that title, thought he had maybe the best swing ever. That's saying a lot since I always compare the purest swing to Junior's. Side note - Junior would be hunting for the HR title if he didn't keep getting hurt in Cincy. Anyways, teams and scouts were still keeping dibs on Hamilton and a few years back the Rays put waivers on him and no one took him, even for $20k!! But before the 2007 season started the Reds got him in a draft for $50k. Imagine him and Junior in the lineup. Anyways, Hamilton's made an almost unbelievable 180-degree swing as he is an MVP candidate this year with the Rangers and could possibly win the triple crown. After watching him in the Home Run Derby last night made me realize just how much of an incredible hitter he is. Baseball has always been my favorite sport, but it's hard to cheer on your team when they're the Royals and they struggle every year (although I think Dayton Moore is the right guy to lead a turnaround). I've adopted the Red Sox as my "other" team thanks to Julia!!
Anyways, it was the first time I had a chance to watch Hamilton's swing. The guy is a freak. I thought Junior, Big Mac, and Sosa were freaks, but nothing like Hamilton. I still think Junior has the most pure swing and I would put Hamilton's swing as a cross between Junior and Jason Giambi. Giambi has the wildest swing and afterswing. The bat speed that Hamilton creates is something I've never seen before. I read that is was clocked at 110 mph which I guess is crazy! I don't know what other power hitters clock at. Anyways, for anyone out there that's curious, power in the swing comes from the hips and forearms. Hamilton's forearms are HUGE!! They might be the biggest since Mickey Mantle. That dude had massive forearms, thus, was a great power hitter. But Hamilton also has amazing hip rotation, which combined with his forearm strength, leads to him hitting 518-foot homers in Yankee Stadium!! Anyways, just some thoughts after watching him set a record with 28 homers in the 1st round of the Derby last night!! What a great underdog story and I will be a fan of his for year's to come! Here's a link that highlights what he has done, but it's not very detailed compared to some of the other stories back in the early parts of this decade. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/albert_chen/05/27/hamilton0602/index.html
Highlights from last night......
2 comments:
TP, I just learned of this blog today, sweet, I'll be checking it all the time!
T-Bone
Good post TP - very informative. I saw just the highlights from the derby the other night, but pretty impressive stuff. It would be nice to have another homerun guy like McGuire, Sosa or Bonds. Baseball was pretty exciting in 1998 when Sosa and Big Mac racked up all those homeruns. I guess all those guys were on the juice, but oh well.
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