Beyond Belief by Josh Hamilton, Tim Keown Page B

against baseball, against expectation? Was it a fear of failure, or a fear of success?
    I started to question myself. I understood where the baseball people were coming from, but I was too young to see the bigger picture. The team was searching for an identity, and it was dying to put guys on the field who might be able to sell tickets and generate excitement even if the team wasn’t quite ready to win.
    The theme of spring 2001 around the Devil Rays could be described as optimistically defeatist. If the team was going to be bad anyway, why not be bad with young players who could get better and might be fun to watch?
    I was the centerpiece of that idea, the number-one pick who could wear the label The Future for now, and The Franchise for later.
    I wanted this, too, but it couldn’t happen the way my back felt. They put me through another round of MRIs and CAT scans and every other test they could think of, and still they found nothing, and still I told them the pain was too much to bear. I was taking prescription painkillers without much relief. The Devil Rays’ frustration was rapidly turning to exasperation, even anger. Was I imagining it? Was my internal pain manifesting itself as physical pain?
    Clearly, the designs that kept springing up on my body, working from the top down, were an exterior sign of my interior confusion. In a sense, I became addicted to the feeling of getting tattoos — the first sign of my addictive personality. I almost laugh when people ask me to explain the meaning behind each of my body’s twenty- six tattoos. The truth is, most of the time I wasn’t interested in what they were putting on my body. Some of the symbols really didn’t mean that much to me, and some of them meant nothing at all. The artists were in charge; they’d make suggestions and I’d take a passing glance at what they were going to do and give it a shrugging okay.
    I had six tattoos by the time my parents went back to North Carolina. I had more than fifteen by the time they came back.
    My momma likes to say she knew things weren’t right from the moment she saw the first tattoo. She saw it as an omen. When I walked in the door and she saw the word hammer across my right biceps, she closed her eyes tight, as if hoping she could wish it away.
    And there were more. There were many more. Blue flames running up my forearms. Various demons on my legs. The devil on the inside of my left elbow. An eyeless demon on my right leg.
    I didn’t know it at the time, but no eyes is a symbol of a soulless being. And that’s exactly what I was on my way to becoming.
    When I showed up with tribal signs on my stomach, my mom’s reaction was one of anger mixed with disgust.
    “What tribe are you from, Josh?”
    Her tone was mocking.
    When I tried to smile her comment away, she pressed on.
    “No, I’m serious, Josh. Tell me what tribe you’re from?”
    I didn’t have any idea what the tribal signs meant. Kevin thought they looked cool, so I let him go. If it bought me some time in the chair, time away from facing the real problems in my life, then I was fine with it. Two or three tattoos in a day, I didn’t care. A day spent in the chair meant another day I didn’t have to fill.
    The reporters covering the Devil Rays tried to find out why I wasn’t playing, and the answers they got didn’t satisfy them. They wrote about the accident and my back pain, but when they tried to get a diagnosis they were met with shrugs.
    I felt pressured to play, so I did. I started swinging a bat and working out in the outfield, and I never felt right. My boastful plan on draft day — three years in the minors fifteen in the majors — veered off course. This was my third year in the minors, and I was sent to Class AA Orlando to start the season. It was a promotion, but this one-step-at-a-time path wasn’t what I had in mind.
    And then, adding injury to injury, I tore a quad muscle running out a ground ball in the first month of the season.