MVN - Most Valuable Network

Rangers’ Hamilton Delivers Show To Remember In 2008 All-Star Home Run Derby

Twenty-eight.

Twenty-eight.

In 1999, it was Mark McGwire who conducted an unforgettable display of electricity as Major League Baseball’s one-time single-season home run champion deftly conquered the famed Green Monster at storied Fenway Park.

Five years later, current Houston Astros teammates Miguel Tejada and Lance Berkman engaged in a classic power struggle at Minute Maid Park, swatting baseball after baseball over the railroad tracks and wowing the southeast Texas contingent - as well as the nation and the world at large - with their jaw-dropping offensive antics.

One year after that, Bobby Abreu turned Comerica Park on its head with a 41-homer performance that had, up until Monday evening’s 23rd installment of the All-Star Home Run Derby, freely reigned as the single most prolific mid-season power exhibition ever witnessed.

Knowing how Josh Hamilton already strives to excel at everything he does both on and off the baseball field, it should come as no great surprise that the latest weighty challenge undertaken by the transcendent 27-year-old outfielder has resulted not only in another overwhelming success, but also in another important step towards international deification.

He received arguably the warmest opening round of applause of any of the eight entrants to participate in the evening’s festivities, a phenomenon that could be blamed only marginally on what some claimed to be a superstar-deprived field. Traditional Home Run Derby mainstays such as David Ortiz, Albert Pujols, Ryan Howard and Vladimir Guerrero were prevented from participating due to either lingering physical maladies, or outright rejection by the league.

It didn’t matter.

Hamilton was present at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday evening for a single, uncomplicated purpose: to crush the living hell out of as many baseballs as he possibly could. To give the millions upon millions of fans watching and listening across the world a show that they would always fondly remember and cherish, even after Josh’s better days had passed him by.

And, in particular, to give the 53,716 in attendance at Yankee Stadium a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition that defied any and all logical explanation.

What some have unaffectionately dubbed as nothing more than a glorified batting practice session quickly evolved into the Josh Hamilton Experience, capable of spellbinding even the most jaded or disinterested of sports fans. His personal pitcher, 71-year-old Raleigh, North Carolina native Claybon Counsil, immeasurably aided Hamilton’s record-shattering pace by tossing one perfect meatball after the next into his former student’s wheelhouse.

Joltin’ Josh did not miss many of them.

It was but a matter of moments after he mashed his first homer of the evening, a 471-foot blast to right-center field that elicited an emphatic “This is awesome, dude!” from Hamilton, that he slugged perhaps his defining moonshot off the Bank of America sign adorning the back wall of Yankee Stadium.

Estimated (perhaps somewhat conservatively) at 502 feet, the mighty clout brought the already buzzing crowd to their feet with a deafening roar, and simultaneously prompted Rangers second baseman Ian Kinsler to give his teammate a quick, but hearty congratulatory hug.

And so the aerial assault continued unimpeded. Five hundred and four feet. Four hundred and ninety-six feet. Five hundred and eighteen feet. Each subsequent bomb served to only further amplify the growing sense of incredulity that was pervading the 85-year-old “House That Ruth Built,” as disbelief began to overwhelm every awestruck man, woman and child on hand.

It was as if “The Natural” had come to life before us.

By the time the first round had mercifully drawn to a close for Josh’s seven bewildered opponents, 28 Hamiltonian home runs had been dispersed across the stadium. Bobby Abreu’s single-round record of 23 long balls had been utterly destroyed, replaced by a mark that is very likely only capable of being topped in this lifetime by Hamilton himself.

He connected on 13 consecutive swings, 16 of 17, and 22 of 25. His 18th missile, that aforementioned 518-foot shot into the third deck in right field that was preceded by a beautiful moment of virtual tranquility as Hamilton stepped back to bask in more raucous applause, was the third-longest in the history of the contest, behind only Frank Thomas’s 519-footer in 1994 and Sammy Sosa’s 524-footer in 2002.

His meticulously crafted 504-foot and 502-foot blasts were the sixth- and eighth-longest, respectively.

Fatigue inevitably got the better of Hamilton and Counsil in the competition’s penultimate and final rounds, limiting Josh to just four and three home runs, respectively, and enabling Minnesota’s Justin Morneau to overtake his power-hitting superior for the 2008 title. But if ever there was a more hollow, irrelevant victory in any sporting competition, I’d like to hear about it.

Revel in the glory of this moment, my friends. The day is fast approaching when this historically inept franchise will be rescued from the oft-cited treadmill of mediocrity for good, ascending from the disconsolate AL West cellar to the top of the baseball world.

And you can be certain that when that day arrives, Josh Hamilton will be at the forefront of that ascension to the promised land.

To briefly call back to March 17th: Yes, the days of the king are here.

And they are most certainly blessed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 2:42 am and is filed under The Season. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.