Hamilton’s team has hung him out to dry. Photo via theclassical.org
Today is a tale of two organizations. I’d rather talk about that than the opening series loss to the pitiful Mets, featuring a 6 run meltdown from Stephen Strasburg today.
1. Good. San Diego Padres
Read this piece this week on For the Win (USA Today’s sports blog), linking to a story by Steve Bisheff of the OC Register in SoCal.
Worth a read. The Padres have re-signed a former minor league prospect every year since 1996 to a contract to give him a small stipend and access to health care after he had a debilitating heart attack on the field.
Its nice to read stories like this.
2. Bad. The Los Angeles Angels
As has been well reported by now, Angels slugger and contract disaster Josh Hamilton had a drug relapse over the off-season and self-reported himself to the league. While negotiations were underway to determine what, if any, penalties were to be done, someone leaked pretty much all the details of the situation, drastically violating the confidentiality of the Joint Drug Agreement and hanging Hamilton out to dry. Which happens; there’s plenty of players who have been labeled “PED users” by virtue of leaked reports of supposedly sealed and/or anonymous testing. It can be assumed but not proven that the leak came within the Angels organization, based on who reported it (team beat reporters) and who their sources generally are (team officials).
Eventually it was determined that Hamilton would suffer no consequences, to which the Angels president John Carpino was quoted, “It defies logic that Josh’s reported behavior is not a violation of his current program.” The GM Jerry Dipoto also issued a rather snippy press release, going out of his way to degrade the player.
Wow. Way to stick up for your player, guys. I agree with Craig Calcaterra whole heartedly here; this comment was petty, graceless, and completely unnecessary. And I also agree with his opinion (stated here), that MLB’s subsequent decision not to investigate the leaks is just as abhorrent. Hamilton has a past; he has an addiction, just like millions of Americans. He struggles with it, and sometimes slips. So do we all. There’s probably not one person reading who wasn’t once “addicted” to something or another, or who had a bad habit they struggled to break, who cannot relate to his issues. Nicotine, Alcohol, high-fat foods, whatever. To show so little sympathy is kind of tough to swallow.
For years, the union held out against drug testing, in large part because of *exactly* what has continually happened since. Constant leaks from people (either in the MLB or with teams) who have axes to grind and who give anonymous quotes to reporters, who then dutifully report salacious details with no provable accusations that end up destroying careers (see players such as David Ortiz, Jeff Bagwell and the “back-acned” Mike Piazza for more examples). This Hamilton example is just one more example. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle either.