Beyond Belief (4 page)
Clay was one of those men who get forgotten when the boys pass through high school and move on to college or the pros. He worked at the Raleigh-Durham airport and spent much of his free time helping kids. He kind of blended in, never demanding anything, giving only instruction and encouragement. He and I both loved baseball more than anything in the world. I never felt as happy as I did when I was on the ballfield, and he looked like he felt the same way.
After I got drafted, I saw Clay at one of the fields during a Legion game and I told him right there, “If I ever get asked to be in the Home Run Derby, I’m going to ask you to throw to me.”
I told him that every time I saw him after that, and he always had the same answer, “That’s nice, Josh. I’d sure like that.”
I NEVER HAD A PROBLEM with being the center of attention on the baseball field. It started when I was little, back when the president of the Tar Heel League showed up to watch me shag baseballs in the outfield of my brother’s practice. I never sought out attention, but my ability brought it to me naturally. In a lot of ways, my parents and I had prepared for a time when the attention would turn from parents and teammates to scouts and college coaches, so when I entered my senior year at Athens Drive High, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect.
Or at least I thought I did, until it became a reality, and then I realized there was no way to prepare adequately for this amount of attention.
Baseball America
magazine and every other publication that cared about amateur baseball rated me as one of the top five high school players in the country. I pitched, played the outfield, and sometimes played first base if I needed to either rest my arm after pitching or save it for an upcoming game. The only real issue for major-league teams was whether to draft me as a pitcher or an outfielder.
My preference was to be an outfielder, so I could play every day and do what I loved best — hit. But I had spent the time since the end of my junior year working out with rubber strength bands, and by the time my senior year started my fastball was clocked as fast as 97 mph. I understood it was a temptation for teams to consider using me as a pitcher, since left-handed power pitchers are the rarest and most valuable commodity in baseball.
By the time my senior season began, I had been told by more than one scout that I would be one of the top two picks regardless — pitcher or outfielder, it didn’t really matter. In one of our early season games, with a line of scouts behind the plate, I was the starting pitcher and came out throwing bullets. The kids on the other team had no chance. My daddy was sitting close enough to see the readings on the scouts’ radar guns — they were consistently 94 to 96 — and after the second or third inning he walked down toward our dugout and got my attention.
“Josh, take a little off,” he whispered.
I was confused. Nobody could touch me. I was blazing everybody.
“Why?”
“’Cuz if you keep throwing like that, all these scouts are going to want to make you a pitcher. Tone it down to about 90 — they still won’t be able to hit it.”
If the scouts were unsure whether I was a pitcher or a position player, later in the game I gave them something that either further confused them or set their minds at ease. On one of the few decent pitches I saw, I hit a 450-foot homer into the football practice field beyond the fence in right-center. I was also walked intentionally three times, an event that happened way too often for my — and the scouts’ — liking. They would grumble and groan about not getting a chance to see me swing the bat after they’d driven all day to watch me play. Some of the coaches we played against understood what was going on and actually allowed their pitchers to throw to me so the scouts could get a look. I hit over .600 my senior year, and I learned to become a pretty good bad- ball hitter because I was never sure I was going to get a decent pitch to hit.
On the days I pitched, I became accustomed to the choreography of the scouts as I stood on the mound and looked in for the catcher’s sign. They stood — sometimes as many as sixty of them — behind the chain-link backstop and raised their radar guns to eye level in unison every time I started into my windup.
When I came to the plate, they all watched intently with their stopwatches in their hands, thumbs on the trigger, ready to click the second I made contact so they could time me running from home plate to first base.
Scouts are a traditionally skeptical bunch. Sometimes they fall in love with a player and exaggerate his abilities, but they’re more likely to seek out flaws to hedge their bets. They rate players based on five tools — hitting for average, hitting for power, throwing, fielding, and speed. A player who is above average in three of those tools — or, in the scouting lexicon, “plus” in three tools — is considered a definite pro prospect.
Scouts throw around the phrase “five-tool player” the way they throw around concrete pillars. It’s the most exclusive description in baseball, and from the time I was a sophomore in high school, it was the term most often used to describe me. Some of the quotations from the scouts in the newspapers were so flattering they bordered on embarrassing. They were comparing me to the great Mickey Mantle and saying I was the best high school baseball player they’d ever seen.
The scouts did their homework, too. They left nothing to chance. When it became clear that I was going to be one of the top two players taken in the June draft, the intensity escalated. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays had the number-one pick, and the Florida Marlins had the second pick, and both teams made sure they knew all about me in advance of the draft.
They interviewed me, my teammates, my friends, my coaches, my parents, my brother, and pretty much anybody else they could think of. They would have interviewed my girlfriend if I had one. They put me through psychological testing to see how I would respond to tricky situations. They asked me unusual questions to judge my ability to think on my feet.
My senior year was like one continuous audition for the draft. My job was to impress these men who came to my games and came to my house to get to know me better. I already knew all the area scouts — the men whose job was to scout the Raleigh area for major-league teams — but my senior year brought out the cross-checkers and the player-personnel guys from the team offices.
When a team is looking at drafting a player high in the draft, they don’t rely on the opinion of just one person. The investment involved dictates a variety of opinions, and national cross-checkers are the seasoned scouts who travel around the country assessing the players already recommended highly by the area scouts.
My status as a potential top pick increased the scrutiny exponentially. The teams drafting near the top sent not only area scouts and cross-checkers but scouting directors and even general managers. Even teams that realistically had no chance of drafting me, teams drafting after the fifth pick, sent cross-checkers to my games in case every team in front of them passed on me.
I talked to college coaches, also, and I made a verbal commitment to North Carolina State — about three miles from home — to make sure the pro scouts knew I understood the process and wasn’t going to leave myself without leverage. But everyone, including me and my parents, knew college wasn’t a legitimate option for someone who was being talked about as one of the top two picks in the country. Faced with the possibility of being given the job of my dreams after high school graduation, choosing professional baseball over college was an easy decision.
The talk of the draft created a buzz around the Athens Drive High campus, too. I’d walk out of a classroom and be met by several other students holding baseballs for me to sign. I always signed, even when it meant being late for my next class. Kids and even some adults crowded around after games to ask for my autograph, and I always took it as a compliment instead of an imposition.
At the beginning of finals week at the end of my senior year, I was faced with the daunting task of writing a final term paper for my senior English class. Reading and writing have never been my strong suit — an opinion shared by my English teacher. He offered me a deal: I could either write the paper or sign a dozen baseballs in exchange for an A in the class. That was an easy decision for me — I have to admit, I signed the baseballs — and I can tell that story now only because he no longer teaches.
With all this attention swirling around me, I knew I had to be smart about what I did and who I hung out with. I was a homebody, anyway, so it didn’t take much effort for me to lay low in anticipation of the draft. I just didn’t want to jeopardize what I’d worked so hard to achieve. I was a public figure, and my actions were being dissected from every possible angle. This was a strange situation for a seventeen- year-old, and I dealt with it by avoiding any situation that might turn out to be compromising. I didn’t go to the prom my senior year because I didn’t want to find myself in a guilt-by-association position. If someone around me was doing something wrong, I didn’t want to be close enough to be implicated. In a funny way, it might seem that I had more sense and a stronger moral compass as a high school senior than I did later in my life.
My dream was so close to becoming reality, and I wanted nothing to get in the way. I had my eyes fixed straight ahead, on the draft and pro ball. After that, I would set my sights on making the quickest possible jump to the big leagues, where I could go about proving my daddy right when he told me, “Son, you’re the best this game’s ever seen.”
There was a special-education student named Ashley Pittman who went to Athens Drive and worked as our bat boy/mascot. Ashley had Down syndrome, and he was one of the happiest people I’ve ever been around. He loved his job, and took it seriously. He dressed out in uniform for every game and came to most of the practices. I always enjoyed being around Ashley, and I considered him a friend.
One time Ashley came home with me for lunch and Granny cooked us some grilled-cheese sandwiches. This was a big deal to Ashley, and he was so appreciative you would have thought Granny bought him a new car.
We played in the state playoffs my senior year, advancing to the semifinals. We lost in that game, and afterward as we were riding home in the bus I noticed Ashley sitting by himself, crying.
I moved up to his row and sat next to him.
“What’s up, Ashley?” I asked.
He didn’t always understand why things happened on the baseball field, and for reasons known only to him he thought he was the reason we lost this game.
“I’m sorry, Josh,” he said. “I’m sorry I lost the game.”
This was ridiculous, of course. Ashley didn’t hit or pitch one ball, but I couldn’t put it that way for fear of hurting his feelings.
“Oh, no, Ashley,” I said. “No one person ever loses a game for a team. We win as a team and lose as a team.”
Immediately, Ashley’s face brightened. He stopped crying and smiled at me as the tears streaked down his cheeks.
“Josh?”
“Yes, Ashley.”
“Does that mean I’m part of the team?”
“Of course it does, Ashley. You know that.”
His smile turned to laughter. He reached over and wrapped his arms around me, squeezing me tight with a big hug.
For the rest of the ride home, if you had looked at Ashley you would have sworn we just won the state championship.
At the banquet after the season, our coach got up and announced he was starting a special award to honor the Athens Drive Jaguar who best exemplified the qualities of compassion and sportsmanship.
When he finished the buildup, he said, “And the first winner of the Ashley Pittman Award is Josh Hamilton.”
I always wanted to get along with everybody, regardless of who they were. In high school I could mingle freely with the jocks and the stoners and the kids like Ashley. I always tried to see the good in people, to live my life in the way I thought was best without judging people who took different paths. I don’t know if my approach to life was Christian or naïve, but I didn’t categorize people and automatically dismiss them. I wanted to be liked, and I thought it was a good thing to be able to find common ground with people with whom I had little or nothing in common.
I’ve gotten a lot of trophies over the years, but the Ashley Pittman Memorial Award is special to me. It’s still prominently displayed in a case at my parents’ house. More than any other trophy or newspaper clipping, it reminds me of who I was and how I lived at that point in my life.
Most of the top high school baseball players were dealing with college coaches, while I was dealing with agents and pro scouts. My parents and I had to choose an agent and a financial advisor before the draft, even though I couldn’t sign with them or take any money until afterward.
Just as every player wants to be the top draft pick, every agent and financial guy wants to be able to say he represents the top draft pick. We had our choice of the best baseball agents and money people in the country, including the most famous agent of all, Scott Boras.
My parents set up the meetings with all the agents and financial guys. They came to the house armed with all their information, and I sat there bored. They were full of compliments and promises, and it was my parents’ job to figure out who was honest and who was full of it.
This was a part of the process I could do without; I just wanted to play ball and let the rest of it take care of itself. My parents might not have college educations, but they were able to sniff out the phonies and the suckups. They narrowed the agent and advisor pool pretty quickly.
In the end, we chose Casey Close from IMG as the agent. Two guys from Northern California, Steve Reed and Ken Gamble, were the friendliest and most straightforward money guys, and my parents hired them after they’d been in the house for less than an hour.
My daddy heard their sales pitch, then Ken and Steve spoke to me for a few minutes while my parents discussed it between themselves in the kitchen. When I was finished answering their questions, my daddy looked at Ken and Steve and said, “We’ve decided to go with you guys.” They tried to contain their excitement, but it was clear they were pretty surprised to have been hired that quickly.