North Carolina State University Athletics
PEELER: Hamilton's Advice Hits Home
2/7/2009 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH, N.C. Advice never sounds so meaningful than when it comes from the mouth of a real superstar. Especially when that star has been to the brink and back.
That’s what NC State’s baseball players and a room full of supporters of the Wolfpack baseball program gleaned from an evening with Texas Rangers all-star Josh Hamilton, the featured speaker Friday night at the third-annual First Pitch Banquet.
The event, sponsored by the Rally Club, has become the traditional kickoff for the Wolfpack baseball season, which begins in earnest later this month.
Hamilton, the Raleigh native and former NC State signee, grew up less than three miles from NC State’s campus and was a regular at all kinds of Wolfpack sporting events as a kid. That was long before he became a baseball prodigy at Athens Drive High School. He signed a letter of intent to play for Elliott Avent’s program, but instead opted to take a $3.96 million bonus to sign with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays after being the No. 1 pick of the 1999 draft.
Hamilton’s story from that point forward has become well-known over the last year the 2001 car accident that nearly ended his career, his addictions to drug, alcohol and tattoos, his ban from baseball and his inspirational comeback story that peaked at last summer’s All-Star Game Home Run Derby.
Hamilton shared his story along with his testimony about being a strong Christian at the banquet, during a candid conversation with emcee Jeff Gravely of WRAL-TV. All current players from the Wolfpack roster were in attendance, along with more than a dozen former players, from ex-major leaguer Alex Cheek, to one of Hamilton’s childhood heroes, Chris Combs, to several players who were taken in the most recent baseball draft: Eric Surkamp, Clayton Shunick, Marcus Jones and Jeremy Synan.
“If I could say anything to you it would be make good choices,” Hamilton said. “It’s very easy to do the wrong thing. It takes a special person to do the right things. So whatever thing you are about to do, think about the consequences before you do it.
“Think about people, places and things. Help each other out as a team. I learned growing up that even if I am not doing what the people I am hanging out with are doing, eventually, if I hang out with them long enough, I will start doing it. Those choices you make help determine what happens the rest of your life.”
Hamilton obviously knows the consequences of those bad choices. He sweated out baseball commissioner Bud Selig’s drawn-out review of his case for re-instatement while playing for an independent league team after being out of baseball for nearly four years.
“Remember, one bad choice can affect not only your life, but the people who love you,” Hamilton said. “You don’t think about those people. Obviously, when I was out there doing what I was doing, I didn’t think about those people. I didn’t think about my mom and dad or grandmother. It’s a big deal. You don’t realize how selfish you can be when you make those choices.”
The message hit home with the current players, who also face challenges and temptations every day of their college lives.
“It was a powerful message,” said two-sport star Russell Wilson, who delivered the invocation for the banquet and got a chance to meet Hamilton for the first time. “He is a very strong man. It’s great for everybody to hear him and his testimony. He’s a great player and a great guy. It shows you can overcome anything and do anything if you put Christ first and put your mind to it.
“He’s in a place we all want to be playing major-league baseball. It’s a great experience hearing him talking about making the right choices, because that’s what we all have to do, not matter how old you are. You might not be perfect all the time, but things can still turn out well.”
Hamilton, wearing a bright red Kay Yow/WBCA Cancer Fund golf shirt and a pink breast cancer awareness ribbon, talked about his special ties to the late women’s basketball coach, who knew and coached Hamilton’s mother, Linda Holt Hamilton, in softball. She didn’t hit prodigious shots out of Yankee Stadium, as her son did at Yankee Stadium last July, she was a good player.
Hamilton said he had a connection to Yow since childhood, as he attended women’s and men’s basketball games with about the same frequency as he attended Wolfpack baseball games.
So when Coach Yow called him up last summer to ask for a few tickets to a Rangers game while she and her staff were in Texas for a fundraising golf tournament for the Kay Yow/WBCA Cancer Fund, he gladly left them for her.
“I was looking for her up in the stands, but I never really did get to see her,” Hamilton said. “I do remember having a good game, though.”
Hamilton left a lasting impressing for the coach in that Sept. 6 contest against the Boston Red Sox: he had a two-run single, a triple that bounced off the top of the deepest center field wall and three of his major-league leading 130 RBIs in a 15-8 victory.
Yow didn’t get to meet with Hamilton after the game, but the rest of the coaching staff did.
“She had to leave early because she wasn’t feeling well,” Hamilton said. “I wanted to go see her later on, but never got the chance. She was a special lady. I will miss her.”
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
