The Rookies

A pensive, younger Josh Hamilton.

Last year, in May, no less a baseball authority than Nolan Ryan said Josh Hamilton reminded him of Mickey Mantle, comparing his talents to those of the legendary Mick.

It’s time we compared the lives of Hamilton and Mantle, too.

Yesterday, Hamilton copped to falling off the wagon in January, drinking for the first time since October 2005, and being drunk in a set of photos published by Deadspin showing him carousing at an Tempe, Arizona establishment.

But to know why him being there matters so much, one must know his journey.

Hamilton was the first pick of the 1999 amateur draft, taken by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays to be a possible franchise player, back when they were the Devil Rays and their best player was Esteban Yan. For a few years in the minor leagues, he appeared to be every bit as advertised, putting up a .347/.378/.593 line in rookie ball, following that with .302/.348/.476 splits in A ball. In 2001, he was named the top prospect in all of baseball by Baseball America.

That year, he injured his back in a car accident, and was sent to Bradenton for rehab, leaving his parents for the first time. He mustered an impressive .303/.359/.507 as a 21-year-old in high-A, but dealt with injuries that would persist into 2002, when boredom led to a tattoo parlor and the parlor’s regulars led Hamilton to drugs of all kinds. Heroin, cocaine, and LSD all entered his life, and baseball left. He dropped out of the game and would be gone from it for three and a half years, circling the drain in a cycle of crack cocaine and alcohol addiction.

Somehow, he got out and got clean, with the help of Jesus and some more mortal friends. He came back to the sport as a rookie in 2007 with the Cincinnati Reds and made the American League All-Star team in 2008.

Hamilton appeared to have his life on track, often talking about his Christian faith as a stabilizing influence. He wrote a book and gave talks and told of dreams.

He was back, his phoenix-like rise from the ashes to the heights of his marvelous performance at the 2008 Home Run Derby an inspiration and a fulfillment of his promise.

Then he fell.

What Josh Hamilton did on that night in January is both disheartening and sad. But it is, fortunately, just one night, and a night that should have no lasting physical effects.

Mickey Mantle was not so lucky.

When Mickey Mantle died in 1995, the immediate cause was liver cancer. The root cause was his loss in a lifelong battle with alcoholism.

Mantle may be the first name to come to mind when considering alcoholism in sports. His thirst, revealed largely after his playing career ran its course, was legendary. His family was equally ravaged by the disease. He wrote his own cover story for Sports Illustrated just a year before he passed, a gut-wrenching account of his addiction.

When Mantle did go to rehab late in life, his sobriety was celebrated, his cause championed by those who hoped he could educate America on his condition. Like countless before and after him, Mantle committed his life to his faith as a step to sobriety, and was hailed for it.

Mantle’s mistake was failing to save himself from himself until too late, and being born into an era that would not force him into try.

Mantle should have been so lucky as to be caught carousing and without his wife. He played at a time when there were no blogs or independent media to expose pictures, and no portable cameras, cell phones and email to transmit the sordid details of his off-field (and on-field) exploits.

Those who knew Mantle’s life helped conceal it until he was safely removed from the public eye, his nights at Toots Shor’s as quietly kept as Hamilton’s night at Maloney’s Tavern was loudly revealed, his chances to save himself passed up time and again as a young athlete’s virility morphed into middle-aged desperation.

Mantle, stoic and heroic.

And even what did leak out did little to change public perception. People of all ages looked up to Mickey Mantle. Fathers taught their sons to hit from both sides of the plate because of the Mick; sons wanted to wear the pinstripes like he did. Women enjoyed his affability; sportswriters loved his openness. He became more than himself, a myth, an ideal, and a role model, a demigod who could do no wrong.

His post-baseball life was a silent Shakespearean tragedy performed behind curtains, and proved exactly why none of us should be regarded as an immaculate exemplar of humanity. Even the most talented and beloved among us have flaws, some larger than others, and the truth often brings to light how foolish believing in anything other than humanity’s utter imperfection really is.

Hamilton will not have the luxury of public silence. And Hamilton will have the advantage of having his flaws laid bare for further laceration.

He will be taunted (as he was, returning to baseball for the first time) and charged with hypocrisy and brought to a very public judgment by fans who looked up to him as a hero. This is good and natural and right: The fans who feel betrayed, the skeptics of faith who see a man of faith falling, and the moralizers who will turn this into a referendum on ethics will all have their takes and pieces of Josh Hamilton.

The stories he tells to sufferers will have another edge to them, one informed by his spectacular failure and public embarrassment. The book he wrote will be read with increased cynicism. His every step will come under the glare of the public’s gaze, his one night of carousing something more than a quarter-million people saw in all its glory in just twelve hours, and something millions more will learn of in the coming days, weeks, and months.

But odds are he will survive, black and blue and breathing.

Neither Mantle nor Hamilton is a saint. (What may be lost in the rewrite of Hamilton’s myth is how heartbreaking and painful this lapse will be for his wife and children.) Neither of them should have ever been expected to be, though, and Hamilton’s public plummet will allow him to discard an already dented halo and focus on getting through his days.

Unlike Mantle, I think Hamilton will, in time, be viewed with a more realistic compassion and given space to heal. He will be given a second chance for his sincerity from a sympathetic public. He will be an inspiration to many precisely because on one night he was not, and because people thought to take notes and snap photos and send them both to Deadspin.

(Bizarrely, the people who will profit most from this revelation—and make no mistake, Deadspin and other Internet outlets that chase down the missing details of this story will profit handsomely, raking in the Internet currency of uniques and pageviews—may be partially responsible for improving his baseball. The revelation of the secret will presumably free Hamilton from the pressures of telling his story and dancing around—or lying about—the details of his sobriety. That might help him focus on his game, which has slipped this season. Funny, no?)

And, further, those people are minor but important players in Josh Hamilton’s struggle to save himself, and factors Mantle never had to contend with—or learn from.

As a product of his fame, Mantle was never forced to evaluate his drinking, and only took his second chance when it was too late to do much more than clear a conscience. He went to the Betty Ford Clinic and sobered up only after he qualified for AARP benefits. His family did not keep his addiction in check, and those who knew the full extent of it were content to leave the Mick to his liquor. After all, after baseball, he wasn’t harming anyone but himself.

Mantle was done in by his demons daily, his life drained with every glass.

Hamilton, with family.

Hamilton is 28. He has a wife and a family. He has a splendid skill set that cannot help but let him dazzle on a baseball field. He has much to live for, a second second chance to take, and a faith in God that will power him.

But faith alone is useless without action, and if Hamilton is blessed with anything, it is the massive support system heavily invested in his health as a person and his success as a baseball player. All of his endorsers, the Texas Rangers, and Major League Baseball are invested in his story; while obscuring Mantle’s addictions was easy enough in his heyday, Hamilton has been and will be a positive note for baseball in a decade marred by drug use of the performance-enhancing kind. Now, while he will be monitored for slip-ups by media waiting to pounce with a “HAMILTON HAMMERED” headline, he should also hear daily how much it means to everyone around him for him to be sober.

Hamilton, more than most, should know that while second chances can come more than once, he’s walking a fine line between controlling his addiction and letting it control him. And if he doesn’t, his advisors should drill that thought into his brain.

I hope, between his own personal efforts and those of the people around him, Hamilton stays sober and healthy for the rest of his life. I wouldn’t want him to face the same fate as Mantle.

But I’m glad he fell the way he did yesterday, hard and publicly, but not fatally.

Mickey Mantle never fell as hard as Josh Hamilton did, instead spending his life on a long, slow descent to his death. He was anointed as a hero but did little to deserve the glow. His is the dark side of alcoholism.

Josh Hamilton, as he has told us, is fully human, bedeviled by an addiction he must resist every day, trying to live his life to the fullest. There’s some simple heroism in that. There is also hope.

Josh Hamilton will never be Mickey Mantle’s equal on the baseball field, no matter how hard he tries. But, whether we see it or not, it is how hard Hamilton tries to be anything but Mantle’s equal in his personal life that will be important.

No human can be perfect. But we can all try.

Good luck, Josh.