Prodigal Son

I'm sitting here at 1:33 a.m. Wednesday morning watching the 15th inning of the MLB All-Star Game for two reasons, neither of which is because I'm a big baseball fan: 1) I am a big night-owl 2) I love the history and the great personal stories behind the game. This one is being held in Yankee Stadium, so rich with both.

Oh wait ... ok, it just ended with the American League winning on a sacrifice fly.
ZZZZzzzz. Gripping.

Anyway, last night was the home run derby, which had the New York crowd completely spellbound as they watched Texas Rangers center-fielder Josh Hamilton crush 28 taters in one round, including a couple 500-plus-footers (see video). What made his hitting exhibition so inspiring wasn't his awesome power. It was that he was even there. It was that he's even alive.

In 1999, fresh out of high school, Hamilton signed with Tampa Bay for $3.96 million, lauded as one of the best baseball prospects ever. But an automobile accident put him on the disabled list ... not a good thing for a young athlete used to the constant discipline and accountability of competitive sports. The solitude of being on the "DL" and the money of professional baseball quickly took him around corners he'd never been before. He started hanging out a tattoo shop, where he had his arms covered with numerous dark and demonic faces. Later, he would join some of the shop's frequent customers at a strip joint, where he would take his first drink and do his first line of cocaine. He was hooked.

The hellish odyssey that followed included a triple addiction to crack, heroin and alcohol; losing his baseball dream; financial ruin; public humiliation; brief sobriety; relapse; jail; health problems; near mortality; alienating his friends, family and new wife; and a series of other painful circumstances too long to list.

But God, as He is known to do, kept pursuing Hamilton through divine appointments with Christian friends and family who wouldn't give up. In 2005, Hamilton moved off the streets and in with his grandmother, who confronted him in such a way that it broke through his calloused, drug-addled heart. Like the prodigal son, he realized all he had lost, "came to himself," and real change began.

Hamilton surrounded himself with accountability and godly influences, allowing Christ to restore his identity, his sobriety, his relationships and even his role as a professional athlete. In 2006, MLB gave Hamilton a reprieve from his exile, and he worked his way back onto a major league roster.

Like so many who carry the lasting and sometimes unerasable consequences of sinful choices [Adam & Eve, David, Moses, Samson among the notables], Hamilton has a constant reminder of his lost years on those tattooed forearms that propelled all his home runs. His strength manifest in weakness; just the way God always works. And Monday night was God's unveiling the strength of His redemptive power.

Hamilton's wife, Katie, put it best.
"God told me he was going to give Josh baseball back, but it wasn't going to be for baseball. It was going to be for something much bigger. He was going to give Josh a platform to help others. He (God) is the most beautiful choreographer. It's not by accident that all the things that have happened in our lives have happened."

The best story in the biggest game on the biggest platform of all.