Texas Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton may be serious about beating his addictions to drugs and alcohol, but so far all his two press appearances since his relapse have shown, is that he still hiding.
Late last month Hamilton went to a Dallas, TX area bar. Later that week Hamilton faced cameras and reporters and said he’d had a relapse. Hamilton admitted to having “three or four drinks.” He did not take any questions.
Last Wednesday, Hamilton again went on TV. He sat down with James Robison, president of the Christian relief group called Life Outreach International. According to his website, the group helps feed hundreds of thousands of children across southern Africa, provides fresh water wells to people in 24 countries. If that’s true, Robison gets major props.
Across from Robison, Hamilton answered a series of softball/t-ball questions and blamed his latest relapse on demonic spirits.
*“I’m taking steps to get rid of baggage that I’ve held onto for my whole life. They’re just holding me back“ said Hamilton.
The thirty minute interview was like a batting practice session, and all three men had something to gain. Robison got to have an audience associate him with a major leaguer and plug his book, Hamilton got cover for his mistake by sitting down with a man of the cloth who plugged Hamilton’s book, and since this was all shown on GBTV, Glenn Beck TV, the man who is so far out there even Fox News canceled his show, Beck may have gained a little air of respectability as tries to climb back to the fringes of the mainstream.
Robison also plugged Beck’s book.
Hamilton says it was his second public slip with alcohol since 2009.
Only he really knows.
After Hamilton met with the media for the first time following the January incident, people who were at the bar started talking about what they saw. It appears that Hamilton left out some important details.
One of those people who claimed to have been there e-mailed a website. In the e-mail the writer says Hamilton, drink in hand, and an unidentified woman started fondling one another in a stairwell. The email says a number of people saw this and started trying to take pictures with their cell phones. The manager tried to stop them.
Hamilton and the woman then took their “relationship” behind the closed doors of the men’s bathroom. The writer of the e-mail says again the manager of the restaurant enabled the tryst by blocking the door to the bathroom, but behind it imitated “loud sexually oriented noise.”
The good reverend didn’t ask Hamilton any questions (on camera) about the alleged sins of the flesh. Hamilton is married and has three kids. Wouldn’t you think, a preacher would ask whether a commandment was broken?
Hamilton knew he’d get the kid gloves treatment and that’s why he was there: to answer Robison’s questions, not the media’s. Yet during the interview, the Ranger’s outfielder had the temerity to claim, “I don’t want to be like other athletes other entertainers or whatever and hide in my house not talk to the media and shutdown complete from the outside world.”
But this wasn’t even Hamilton’s first act of deceit. Earlier in the evening, of the day in question, Hamilton said he called Texas Rangers teammate Ian Kinsler and asked him to come to the restaurant. Hamilton had already drunk alcohol, but he never did in front of Kinsler or told him he had been drinking. The two went to another place for about 30 minutes. Kinsler drove Hamilton back to where he was staying, but told his teammate he was in for the night, but he lied. Hamilton later returned to the original bar.
If Hamilton is willing to lie to a person, with whom he eats, sleeps and plays baseball with for 6 months every year why would he tell us the truth?
And what was Hamilton’s true motive for calling Kinsler? Surely, Hamilton did not just cold call Kinsler to hang out for a half an hour. Could Hamilton have been trying to provide himself with an alibi witness and alibi establishment?
At one point, Robson asks Hamilton to look into the camera and tell the viewers his sins. It was a confessional, and on the other side, no one to call BS.
Confide Hamilton, “I’m going to be everything I can to break these barriers down and become a better man a role model someone your little ones can look up to.”
Hamilton is simply doing what addicts do best, in addition to using drugs or alcohol; they lie about using drugs or alcohol. Hamilton talked to the media, alright. It was his agenda, and he took no questions. He talked to the media alright. Hamilton spoke with a preacher in Glenn Beck’s right-wing back pocket. Anybody in the mainstream media to going up against the ‘legitimacy’ of those conditions runs the risk of being called a Marxists, Leninist, communist, double-Muslim terrorist.
Hamilton’s choice of healer is also highly questionable.
Robison isn’t just your ordinary average preacher. He’s a conservative ideologue who made a name for himself in the 1980’s by railing against homosexuality and is in league with others of his ilk, including Beck, to replace president Obama with a social conservative. Beck’s the guy who thinks the President “doesn’t like white people.”
Hey Glenn, ever seen a picture of Obama’s mama?
In addition to helping people in Africa, Robison blogs about having, “Body Armor for the Culture War,” “Small God, Big Government,” and “Who Must Win the 2012 Election.”
In case you don’t know the Josh Hamilton story, these aren’t his first two brushes drugs and alcohol. He was drafted number one overall in the 1999 amateur baseball draft. Hamilton was considered a can’t miss prospect, but he did. Despite his high draft pick Hamilton, didn’t play in a major league game until 2007.
Hamilton was actually banned from baseball from 2004 to 2007. This is Steve Howe territory, except Howe’s ban for life was overturned on appeal after just two years. By his own admission, Hamilton was doing coke and putting away a bottle of Crown Royal everyday.
This is a man who knows how to hide those demons. So when Hamilton says, the devil made me do it, like Flip Wilson’s character “Geraldine,” pull for him to make it past those demons, but don’t believe that anyone but Hamilton is to blame for his own troubles. And when Hamilton says he’s taking steps to get rid of baggage, he needs to be reminded that honesty has got to be one of those steps.
*All quotes (except at his admission of three or four drinks) attributed to Josh Hamilton were found at this link: http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/02/15/texas-rangers-star-athlete-josh-hamilton-opens-up-about-relapse-on-gbtv/
