Beyond Belief by Josh Hamilton, Tim Keown Page A

sit there and escape from baseball and the people who wondered why I wasn’t playing and the whispers that suggested I wasn’t really injured and had lost my drive for the game. With my eyes closed and the ink taking shape under my skin, the world got a lot smaller. There were no expectations, nobody telling me how great I was or how great I could be. There was nobody wondering when they were going to see a return on their nearly $4 million investment. If I had been peppered with baseball questions while I sat in the chair I would have found somewhere else to hang out.
    The hours I spent inking my body could be seen as self-punishment, maybe even self-mutilation. I’m sure a psychologist would have a field day with that, and several of them tried. Even an amateur could see I was abusing myself on the outside to mask the pain on the inside.
    But what caused that interior pain? I’m still not sure, but like everybody, I have my theories. My entire life had been devoted to baseball. I’d been playing since I was old enough to remember, and from the time I turned seven years old people who watched me thought I was destined for the big- leagues. All around me they would whisper, “That’s Josh Hamilton; he’s going to make it big someday.” And not just the big leagues, but big-league stardom. And not just stardom, but superstardom. The idea was never phrased as a question, or delivered as an opinion. It was a given, as certain as the changing of the seasons. I thought the same thing myself, obviously, since I first voiced that intention to my parents when I was twelve years old. I accepted the expectations, even encouraged them, but at some point they began to feel like a burden.
    What started as a compliment — “Josh Hamilton, can’t miss prospect” — began to take on a different tone. In my mind, it started to sound like an order. And if I didn’t fulfill the order, if I didn’t step up to meet and exceed each of the expectations placed upon me, did that by definition make me a failure?
    I expressed none of this verbally, of course, because it wasn’t something I owned the words to articulate. And who would have understood, or even listened? Were the tattoos a simple backlash against this growing burden, a desire to experience something new, just because I could? Was I changing myself on the outside to reflect the changes I felt on the inside?
    It started as a release, a mostly harmless act of rebellion. But after a while, it no longer felt like a release. It felt like confinement, another master to obey.
    At this point in my life, at nineteen years old, I was considered the best minor-league player in baseball. My future was a consistent topic of conversation in the Tampa–St. Pete area. Since the team came into existence in 1997, the Rays had done nothing but finish in last place. They lost with young players, and they lost with old players.
    The fans wanted something different. Ownership wanted something different. The team looked destined for another hundred-loss season. The roster was filled with a collection of past-their-prime veterans — Greg Vaughn, Vinny Castilla, Fred McGriff — with a few not-ready-for-prime players mixed in. And the pitching staff, like all Rays’ pitching staffs since the team was born, was better left undiscussed.
    This is where I came in. I was something different. The fans always want the top prospects to be brought up quickly, no matter what the people making the decisions believe is right. On a team like the Devil Rays, there is more pressure to move forward. The number-one pick in the draft — a guy who is rated the top prospect in the game after two minor-league seasons — is seen as someone who should be in a major-league uniform right now, no questions asked.
    I was very close to fulfilling my dream and taking a big step toward making everybody’s expectations a reality. And yet I was in a state of mental anguish, unsure how to escape. Was the pain a backlash