He's ours.
March 16, 2008:
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Maybe the most ridiculous thing about a Josh Hamilton Batting Practice Display is that since so many of his missiles explode like a perfectly struck tee shot, every once in a while he'll bump one off the end of the bat, and your eyes shift to the outfielder in whose direction the ball is traveling (it could be any one of them, from left center field to straightway right), and as you wait for him to trot in to haul the lazy fly in, or at worst camp under it in place to make the catch, instead you see the outfielder jog back toward the fence, basically a courtesy gesture as the mis-hit ball carries over the wall to keep the last several Hamilton shots company.
And then there are the pitches that Hamilton squares up on, the ones that cause you, involuntarily, to issue a "Whoaaaaa" in unison with your three-and-a-half-year-old son, with the same reaction of equal parts awe, adrenaline, and disbelief. The ones on which the outfielders stand as motionless and unneeded as they do on the requisite bunts that the Rangers' penciled number two hitter drops (and drops well) at the start of his rounds.
David Murphy (as I'd hoped) and Marlon Byrd, hitting in sequence with Hamilton, had the misfortune of having what were absolutely impressive BP sessions of their own look unjustly pedestrian in comparison to their teammate's, like watching Terrence Newman and Terrell Owens run a 40 alongside Deion Sanders.
The Hamilton swing is so devoid of effort, it makes no sense. You've seen the scout's comment about the "flat-out, God-given gasoline" that comes effortlessly out of Neftali Feliz's arm. Josh Hamilton endows his baseball bat with a flat-out, God-given thunderstorm. A nearly silent thunderstorm, somehow.
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The players fringing the diamond tonight, each of them Major League All-Stars themselves, had the same speechless, wide-eyed, almost giddy expressions on their faces that Max and I had on the couch watching that spectacle. Before Josh Hamilton's first round was done, the players were all on their feet, just like the 50,000 Yankee Stadium fans who, in the space of 10 minutes, had adopted him as their own.
The best moment for me was not the 502 off the Bank of America sign in right center, or the 504, or the 518. Not the 13 straight. Not the blast that tied Bobby Abreu for the greatest first round in Derby history, and not the one that broke the record. Not the blast that Milton Bradley and Ian Kinsler and Michael Young were having, though that was pretty cool.
The best moment, I thought, was after home run number 17, when Hamilton stepped out of the box to catch his breath, and did what we all wanted him to do. He stopped. Slowly turned around and looked to the crowd, which somewhere included his family. And then to another part of the crowd. And another. Smiling, soaking that moment in, the one he'd dreamed almost prophetically about, as awestruck as those 50,000 who were on their feet, looking back at him and chanting his name. "I got chills," Hamilton would say afterwards. "I got chills."
Take note, Rangers fans.
As one of you texted me as it was all unfolding:
He's ours.
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