When news of Josh Hamilton’s asking price on the free agent market was first reported – the former American League MVP is believed to be seeking a $175 million contract to be doled out over the next seven years – the response varied as to whether or not such a target was realistic. Some believed the terms to be preposterous, while others suggested that there would be at least one front office out there willing to approach such a demand. Among the arguments for or against such a contract being offered there was one common theme: the player’s past.
By now, we’re all somewhat aware that Josh Hamilton’s past includes a lot of drugs and a lot of alcohol. It’s easy for us to blindly state that a recovering alcoholic and drug addict is the exact type of person in whom you do not want to invest tens of millions of dollars. They will always be affected by their past, right? We’ve heard the pop psychology explanations about such things time and time again. Once you’re an addict, you’re always an addict.
I’m severely under qualified to examine the legitimacy of such a statement. And I suspect that the great majority of us should be similarly indisposed to offering opinions on how the life of an addict might affect his or her future ability to stay healthy. Nonetheless, we imagine that we understand these things enough to use Hamilton’s non-baseball playing past to judge the value and worth of Josh Hamilton as a baseball player in the future.
I don’t know why the human mind feels the need to do this, but it does. We convince ourselves that our own understanding expands far beyond its rather limited boundaries and then we use our overestimation to explain and pass judgment on things that we truly can’t begin to understand. This is the basis for about 95% of what’s written about sports.
Perhaps most bothersome about those referring to Hamilton’s past as a means of refuting his future value is that it’s being done without much in the way of understanding what comprises his past. While I don’t believe it’s possible to wholly understand how Josh Hamilton’s past affects his future, we might be able to at least glean something that approaches an understanding of his past, or at least the past that’s been presented to us in interviews and features through the years.
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