"Hamilton! Hamilton!"

Josh Hamilton's virtuoso performance in Major League Baseball's Home Run Derby calls to mind some scenes from his favorite movie. Indeed there are several parallels between Hamilton's story and that of Roy Hobbs in "The Natural."

Like young Roy Hobbs, Hamilton learned to excel at baseball during a time of innocent youth. He grew up in the West Raleigh Little League, where games at the small field off Jones Franklin Road were often followed by trips to Dairy Castle for ice cream. Coaches pitched to the youngest kids, trying to hit the fat part of the bat in much the same way Hamilton's batting practice pitcher Clay Council tried to help him connect in Yankee Stadium. Josh Hamilton quickly progressed in the nurturing environment of the West Raleigh Little League, thanks in large part to the support of his parents, Tony and Linda, who threw  batting practice and hit flies to their son in and around the WRLL games and practices.

There are more parallels. The teenage Josh Hamilton was a left handed pitcher who threw 96 miles per hour. Remember in the movie when teenage Roy Hobbs' left handed heat humbled the Babe Ruth like character known as "The Whammer?" Both Hamilton and Hobbs seemed to have the world on a string as young prospects, destined to be "the best there ever was." I was at the Hamilton house the day the Tampa Bay Devil Rays made him the number one pick of the 1999 draft. The club viewed Josh as a six tool player, the sixth tool being character. 

The movie character played by Robert Redford saw his career cut short by a silver bullet from the sinister Harriet Bird. The real life story of Josh Hamilton also entered a dark period. He and his mother were injured in a car accident prior to the 2001 season. When Linda Hamilton returned home to Raleigh to recover from injuries sustained in the accident, Josh found himself on his own for the first time. Perhaps like Roy Hobbs he developed some questionable associations. Over the next two years, he became addicted to cocaine, and was eventually banned from the game he loved. From 2002 until 2006 Hamilton played no organized baseball. He would sometimes go to a batting cage on Western Boulevard to take a few cuts. But he was miles from the Major Leagues. And his addiction often separated him from the people he needed most.

Hamilton's friends in West Raleigh could only hope and pray the young man they knew would someday get his life back together. The thought that he might ultimately get a chance to show the world his phenomonal baseball gifts seemed too remote to even contemplate.

Josh Hamilton says his favorite scene in "The Natural" is the one where Roy Hobbs lies in the hospital trying to get healthy enough to play in the New York Knights' penultimate game with Pittsburgh. It is here that Hobbs begins to sort out, with the help of his life long friend Iris, the forces of good and evil. Hobbs frets about his past mistakes. Iris tells him we all have two lives-the "life we learn with and the life we live after that." And as Hobbs utters Hamilton's favorite line in the movie, "God I love baseball," you understand why this scene is so fundamentally intertwined with where Josh Hamilton is today. Those closest to him-his wife Katie and her father Michael Dean Chadwick, Josh's grandmother Mary Holt, and his parents, helped him understand that only by moving away from his addiction could he begin to move forward. Powered by a strong faith and love from his family, Hamilton earned another chance. And he wants to use that chance to help others learn from his mistakes.

The power we all saw Hamilton exhibit in Yankee Stadium was perhaps itself powered by a dream Hamilton had in the winter of 2006. Hamilton remembers in the dream taking part in a home run derby at Yankee Stadium. He doesn't remember swinging the bat during the dream-only that he was interviewed afterward by ESPN, saying he "had gotten to this miraculous point through the power and grace of God." Footnote here: Not only was Hamilton still months away from reinstatement to baseball at the time, but he couldn't have known there would be a home run derby in Yankee Stadium. The fabled place had yet to receive its 2008 All Star designation.

Monday night, with the nation watching in Yankee Stadium, Hamilton put on a display that not even the most inventive Hollywood script writer could have conceived. He hit left handed blasts the left handed Roy Hobbs would have marveled at. OK, Hamilton.didn't hit the light tower, But that sound we heard in Hobbs' final home run swing in the movie-could be heard time and time again Monday night. Hamilton hit thunderous fly balls to remote places normally reserved for sluggers like Mantle, Jackson, and Ruth. At Yankee Stadium, where even Alex Rodriguez hears boos,  thousands of fans chanted his name-"Hamilton, Hamilton." Perhaps these fans were emulating the spectators from the movie, who yelled "Roy, Roy."  More likely there  were they just expressing support and admiration for a guy who has succeded against great odds. A man who has become so thoroughly grounded in his roots that he puts faith and family above baseball.

Roy Hobbs, at movie's end, most trusted those elements from his foundation-his close friend Iris, and his bat "Wonderboy." When the bat cracked in two, Hobbs, turned to the batboy and said "Bobby, pick me out a winner." Bobby returned with the "Savoy Special" honed by hand in the fashion Hobbs taught him. The hero in "The Natural" understood the importance of his final swing. "The young boys look up to you so" Iris had told him.

He has learned that while baseball is so important to him as a tool for expression and reaching out to others, that it his his faith and his family that matter most. Both were on full display in Yankee Stadium. Although the cameras didn't show his family members, Hamilton more than once just looked up into the stands and smiled. But this is more than Robert Redford seeking the security of seeing Glen Close watching his every move. Did you see the might of Hamilton's power at the plate? Four years out of baseball for Josh Hamilton, and now he can do this? There seem to be forces at work here-positive forces-that mere words can't explain.

It was an emotional evening watching the home run derby on television-not only for myself, but also for some people I know who used to watch Josh back in the West Raleigh Little League. We had just hoped one day he would get his life back together. Having heard his description of what he had to overcome to get to this point, to see the joy on his face as he freely swung the bat was pretty overwhelming.

The movie "The Natural," which differs ultimately from the original novel by Bernard Malamud, gives us a happy ending. Hollywood can't write the ending to Josh Hamilton's story. Only he can. He says he must live day by day, putting faith and family first. Baseball is a great vehicle, but not the ultimate destination. As the movie says: "There is the life we learn with. And the life we live after that."