Free Beyond Belief by Josh Hamilton, Tim Keown

written in my head. I hit .302 with 13 homers and 61 RBIs, and after the season I was named the South Atlantic League Most Valuable Player. I was named the Player of the Year in Class A baseball, and the Devil Rays awarded me the Minor League Player of the Year for the organization.
    Everything was falling into place. I started to think about accelerating my stated three-year timetable and making a run at a major-league roster spot for the 2001 season. The Devil Rays’ big-league team completed another last-place finish, and the team seemed intent on going with younger players after a few failed seasons with a roster of veterans. The Jose Canseco–Greg Vaughn era didn’t work, so I was hoping they’d try out a Hamilton-Crawford era.
    I was getting stronger, becoming more of a man and less of a boy, and I vowed to use the off-season to increase my strength.
    When they announced I had been given the league MVP award, my daddy shook my hand and said, “You’re on your way, Josh.” He was proud and I was happy, but there was a sense of inevitability about the path my career had taken.
    After all, this was the way we expected it to be — certain milestones needed to be met on the way to the ultimate destination. A Class A MVP award was nice, but I had to believe there was more out there where that came from.

CHAPTER FOUR
    IN THE WINTER months after the 2000 season, with an MVP to my name and thoughts of the big leagues bouncing through my head, I spent a good part of the off-season in the Tampa area, in a small house we bought to use during spring training and, with any luck, the regular season.
    My parents stayed home in Garner, outside Raleigh, in the big ranch house on twenty-two acres we bought to be our family’s main home. While I was working out and getting ready for the season, I made a decision: I would get a tattoo. A growing number of players had them, and since that day in Wendy’s with Carl Crawford I had secretly — at least secretly as far as my family was concerned — wanted to get one. I found a tattoo shop, and walked in and asked for my nickname — Hambone — to be tattooed in all caps around my right biceps.
    I didn’t announce the tattoo’s arrival to my parents, but the next time I was home I showed it to my momma, and she was predictably upset.
    “God gave you a beautiful body,” she told me. “Why are you ruining it?”
    “I don’t know, Momma,” I said. When I saw how much it bothered her, I said, “I promise I won’t get no more.”
    The promise was halfhearted. To me, a tattoo wasn’t an act of rebellion. I’m sure there was some declaration of independence included in the decision to do this, knowing they wouldn’t approve, but I wasn’t actively attempting to make anyone angry. I just wanted a tattoo, that’s all. They didn’t understand that. And over the next few months, leading to spring training, I decided I wanted five more.
    So. The path to self-destruction — where did it start? Did it start with an automobile accident? Loneliness? Boredom? Weakness? Could it have been something as superficial as those six tattoos? It’s easy to say my first taste of independence led me down a path to self-destruction, but I’d argue it was a little more involved than that.
    When I walked into the clubhouse for the first time that spring, in mid-February 2001, those six tattoos, all on my upper arms and chest, created quite a stir. Judging by the reaction, you would have thought I walked in carrying an Uzi and telling everyone to hit the deck.
    I changed out of my street clothes and into my uniform and, one by one, the players who knew me did a double-take. They’d look, then realize what they’d seen, then jerk their heads back and look again in disbelief.
    First baseman Steve Cox walked over to me as I stood at my locker and asked, with mock seriousness, “Josh, is that you?”
    I had two tattoos on each arm and two on my chest. The ink became the talk of camp for a few