AngelsSurfer

Perhaps...because he honestly doesn't give a damn. What's it to him if he goes on the DL? He gets paid and he doesn't have to worry about playing and getting booed. Perhaps also because many of those injuries are exaggerated. If he was really feeling severe chest pain radiating to his armpit and had so much pain that he was having trouble breathing, the guy should have been in the ER getting checked for a heart attack or a collapsed lung, not playing baseball (and yes, I know he said right side, not left, but it's not out of the question that heart pain can appear in the central or right side of the chest).
That's an incredibly cynical POV and I know it, but Hamilton doesn't seem to be invested in the game in the same way the other players are. He doesn't seem to be sitting there fighting to get back or worrying about his place in the lineup the way other injured players are doing.

It's simple guys.
Anyone with any sort of addiction are wired differently. Like someone with autism, learning disability, or even psychological issues like depression, panic attacks, or anxiety.
Where some of you get that there is some sort of on and off switch is absurd and ignorant. I'm guessing you guys believe retards should suddenly have better motor skills or people with anxiety disorders should stop being pussies?
There's a lot that goes into everyone's make up. From genetics, to childhood development, to traumatic events. Who know what or why he became an addict or has addictive personality disorder, but it's his makeup and with him the rest of his life like his hair color.
It's just astounding that some here who probably have a deemed normal life think that's the norm for everyone and people that don't live or fit in their makeup are some how terrible people or treated like some kind of **** up.

Yes, Very balanced. Sobriety is hard work. Hard work I conclude Josh doesn't buy into. 

Oh, I agree completely. He's an asshat, he's had a lot of extra chances, and he's got far more resources at his disposal than most people do. With ANY Illness the onus is on the patient to agree to follow the treatment plan and make a commitment to being healthy - and Josh isn't doing that at all. This is all on him. And I will never say "he can't help it" because while addiction is a disease, he has the choice to get help. Josh is responsible for his actions and they're reprehensible.
However I just took exception to the idea that someone can just decide they're going to stop being an addict and boom, they can do it, and maintain longterm sobriety, without any help. To me that's like telling someone with a broken arm that if they simply decide that their arm isn't broken anymore, they will be cured.
 
Does that make sense?

Addiction is a disease. He can't help heal his addiction by pulling his head out of his ass any more than he could help heal a broken arm that way. It needs treatment like any other condition.
In terms of overall attitude, not being an asshat would help him, though, yes.

Addiction is a disease. He can't help heal his addiction by pulling his head out of his ass any more than he could help heal a broken arm that way. It needs treatment like any other condition.
In terms of overall attitude, not being an asshat would help him, though, yes.

Nobody is saying it is easy for an addict to stop using. If it were as simple as saying "hey, just don't do it anymore," we wouldn't have people who struggle with addiction for decades and lose everything to it.

However - and I say this as someone who has known addicts and has had to cut a few of them out of my life - it IS on the addict to make a commitment to staying well. It's on the addict to make that commitment to get whatever help they need so they don't relapse. As I understand it with both AA and NA - and I'm not saying everyone uses this system - everyone has a sponsor they can call who can offer them immediate help if they even THINK of using. It IS on the addict to stop making excuses for their behavior and take responsibility for themselves.

And as others have mentioned, Josh is fortunate to have the time, money and connections to get all the help he needs. The Angels have his accountability coach on the payroll. They seem to have been committed to helping him work through his issues. That's way more help than most addicts ever have.

Actually confessing was an even more weasel move.
He knew he could dodge the maximum penalties by doing the "honorable" thing, rather than fail another drug test.
Don't get it confused, he didn't man up. If anything, he took the pussy route

As others on this thread have said, I harbor no ill will toward Josh Hamilton, the human being. I dislike Josh Hamilton, the Angels player, because I feel he's been a waste while he's been here, and he has a bad attitude in general. The positivity on the team seems to go up immensely when he's not there/when he's not in the lineup. If he didn't play for the Angels again I would not consider it to be a loss. And I think that's how a lot of fans feel.
 
In terms of addiction, I've been lucky enough never to contend with it personally, but I have lost friends to it- friends that died, and friends that were so immersed in their addiction that I didn't know them anymore, I didn't like the people they'd become, and I had to cut ties. I also have friends that have very proudly maintained long-term sobriety from drugs and/or alcohol. It's a beast of an illness to fight, but it requires hard work, commitment and the desire to actually engage in the fight for the long haul. What I notice about my friends that have successfully fought and won against addiction is that they are very high on personal accountability. They don't make excuses for themselves and they don't blame their failures on others.
 
Josh doesn't seem to have that concept down yet. Every interview with him seems to be a blame game - the fans were horrible, he didn't feel good, whatever. And that IS on him. As others have mentioned, he's been given far more chances, and more resources to try to fix this, than many addicts are lucky enough to get.
 
I hope for HIS sake that they don't just slap him on the wrist and treat this as a first offense. He needs to be suspended for a while - simply because if he's relapsing again he needs to take the time to check into rehab and deal with that head on. He's not going to help the team if he's trying to handle a relapse during a busy season, and more importantly he's not going to help himself.

I think the article made some valid points on both players. I remember a game last year where it was the bottom of the ninth, the opposing team walked two players specifically to get to Grant Green at the bottom of the lineup and strike him out - and he ended up getting a hit and winning the game for the Angels.
 
And Rasmus clearly proved himself at the end of last season. There may very well be a place for him as a starter. If Hector Santiago is in the same shape he was at the end of last season, I'd prefer to see Santiago in the bullpen and Rasmus starting. On the other hand he's a very valuable long man for the bullpen, especially since there's at least one starter who has the potential to flake out and get pulled early (hi CJ!). It will be interesting to see what they do.

I explained what I said in my comment above, if you don't want to read it, it's not my problem. You're trying to twist my words and misinterpret what I said; I'm not responding to you anymore.

What Lou fails to realize is the league expanded the boundaries. The problem is they failed to notify LL for approval. I doubt that these kids understood the politics of the situation.
LL originally looked into the situation after it was brought to their attention and was ok with it. It took a second look and some investigating after being pressured by the other league.
LL finally made the correct call.

From the snack shack to the draft, little leagues across the nation are rigged with loopholes, politics and favoritism. The kids are just pawns in the game. Shameful indeed.

You don't honestly think 11 and 12 year olds in the inner city are privvy to the exact details of the district borders, or to the home addresses of every member of their team? Or that they know all of the thousands of kids in the greater Chicago area who play baseball? The GCA is a huge place; these kids wouldn't be hanging out in the neighborhood or going to school together even if the districting were correct. Not to mention that it's a place where people do move around a lot so it's actually reasonable for new kids to show up midyear.
 
IMHO it's not justified to think that children premeditated this cheating. If it's a situation like Danny Almonte where he was 15 and was told to say he was 12? Yeah, that's on him, because he knows how old he is. In this case? Absolutely not.
 
When I was 12 and on a sports team, if a new kid showed up on the team, my reaction would have been "well, he was allowed on the team. The coach let him be here. It must be okay." They league changed the borders; the kids who played and their parents were told that those borders were correct. Why would they have had any reason to question that? Kids at that age trust the adults around them to do the right thing. They are taught to listen to their coaches and to trust that their coaches are doing right by them and there's nothing here that would have made a kid think otherwise.
 
Should the adults in this case be banned from LL forever? Yes, of course. But this isn't on the kids.

ALL of the kids involved in this lost: The ones on the JR team, the ones that were excluded, the ones on the Vegas team that were the legit winners but will reap none of the accolades or perks of it. There aren't any winners here. I feel sorry for all of them. And yes, that includes the JR kids, because they went out there and played hard, and they shouldn't have lost due to the unscrupulous actions of the adults who were supposed to be watching out for them.
 
And McCutchen's article is spot on. Good players from all socioeconomic levels should have the chance to succeed and they don't...that should change.

This forum is sad.

it's impossible to punish the adults effectively without the kids being included in the collateral damage. it's hard to know what a kid knows because the rules and bylaws can easily go over their head. it's pretty easy to convince a kid of what is an obvious lie to an adult. that being said, you can't allow their championship to stand when they cheated, other kids that weren't a part of cheating would be victimized twice by it.
 
also, anybody that had anything to do with the cheating should be barred permanently from youth baseball. we don't need them teaching kids that wrong is right.

...and so it begins. The first built-in excuse as to why he can't produce for 2015. Did anyone really think he was going to get to, say. May, without an injury or an "injury" of some sort?
 
The dynamic seems to be better without him on the field, so I can't see this as a negative for the team...just for the owners' pocketbook.

He has been lifting. He definitely looks bigger. I didn't ask him to take off his shirt but I don't think its fat. I think 224 is a pretty reasonable weight for a guy that tall.

No kids, childfree, fairly young, and I leave games early sometimes. I try not to, because I do like to be there for the last out.
However, in my case, transportation is an issue. I take the Angels Express, and that leaves at 11:30 at the latest, regardless if the game is over or not. And that's usually the last train of the night in both directions out of Anaheim (to LA or Oceanside) so there's no way to skip it and stay later. Also an issue is that connecting mass transit from either LA or Oceanside usually ends around midnight or 1am, so if you're getting there too late, you're stranded.
 
If I were to drive, it's at least an hour from my home to Angels Stadium, assuming the 5 is moving. Games sometimes seem to let out about the time Disneyland is closing or the fireworks there are over, so the freeway can be a mess. I'd imagine that some fans live even further away. If someone's leaving a game at 11:30 and it's taking them, say, an hour and a half or two hours to get home, it might be a bit of a problem if they need to be up at 6 or 7 for work the next morning. If they HAVE brought a kid to the game, by 10 or 11 they might be getting completely overtired. So the only answer is to leave before the game is over.
 
As to the pace of the games, it IS annoying and time consuming when certain batters feel the need to go for a walk and spend five minutes fussing between each pitch (I love Calhoun but he's so bad about this). If they were to finally enforce the rule about batters needing to keep one foot in the box, unless they're dodging a wild pitch, I think it would be a good thing. Letting pitchers and catchers do intentional walks without going through the whole four pitch rigmarole? Also a good thing. I don't know how I feel about the pitch clock, though. I think it might mess up some pitchers' ability to get signs from their catchers and decide on a pitch.

That's pretty much my feeling on it, too. The team's referred to just as the Angels, regardless. I grew up in NYC where the New York Nets, Jets and Giants all played across the river in New Jersey, so the geographic discrepancies in the name don't really bother me...
 
And as for Los Angeles being different from OC, absolutely. However, there are a LOT of different parts of LA, with a lot of different cultures and ways of life. It's very diverse, and to say that it's all a cesspool is a little misguided, IMHO. I mean, Bel Air, Playa del Rey, Brentwood, Westwood and the Hollywood Hills are all technically and legally part of the city of Los Angeles. 
 
And if you look at LA County as a whole you've got Marina del Rey, Malibu, Culver City, Santa Monica, Manhattan Beach, Torrance, El Segundo (which is known as Mayberry...), Beverly Hills, etc. etc. etc...there are a lot of places there that are absolutely wonderful.
 
If we look at the OC there are huge differences in how people live, too - not everyone in OC lives well. There's probably a huge difference in the quality of life for someone living in the parts of Anaheim with gang activity vs. Languna Beach.

What a thread.
 
Couple of things.
 
The Los Angeles name means more for nationwide marketing than regional.
 
Ask folks back East about Los Angeles -- everyone knows LA - ask about Anaheim and they may not be able to place it in California, This is particularly true since Disney World was built in Orlando, Fla.
 
The best place/ venue for the Angels to play ball is right where they are -- near the junction of the 57 and the 5 and near the 405 -- perfect location. However, the biggest obstacle to the Halos remaining in Anaheim -- the City of Anaheim.......they put a deal on the table and then ripped it away after Arte and the Angels essentially accepted it.........like the deal, don't like the, think it's a give away (as apparently the Mayor does) that can all be debated with points on both sides -- bottom line.......COA City Council should not have authorized offer in official action only to pull it back.......
 
This has Angels looking for options -- all those competing NFL Stadium proposals (at least three) and arguably only one NFL team (maybe) means two of them will be looking for another professional sports team -- and there are the Angels -- stuck in negotiations with Anaheim, looking around for a better deal........
 
I think the COA should pay close attention to the stadium noise up North and get serious about locking down and in the Angels for another generation.

That's pretty much my feeling on it, too. The team's referred to just as the Angels, regardless. I grew up in NYC where the New York Nets, Jets and Giants all played across the river in New Jersey, so the geographic discrepancies in the name don't really bother me...
 
And as for Los Angeles being different from OC, absolutely. However, there are a LOT of different parts of LA, with a lot of different cultures and ways of life. It's very diverse, and to say that it's all a cesspool is a little misguided, IMHO. I mean, Bel Air, Playa del Rey, Brentwood, Westwood and the Hollywood Hills are all technically and legally part of the city of Los Angeles. 
 
And if you look at LA County as a whole you've got Marina del Rey, Malibu, Culver City, Santa Monica, Manhattan Beach, Torrance, El Segundo (which is known as Mayberry...), Beverly Hills, etc. etc. etc...there are a lot of places there that are absolutely wonderful.
 
If we look at the OC there are huge differences in how people live, too - not everyone in OC lives well. There's probably a huge difference in the quality of life for someone living in the parts of Anaheim with gang activity vs. Languna Beach.

I'm disappointed that they didn't choose to offer him a deal. I thought he was a wonderful asset to the pen and he did a great job as a reliever.

Okay, this thread title scared me. I was thinking Shoemaker.