The Hits Keep On Coming

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It’s baseball’s one true national treasure. It’s the most famous open-air stadium in this country, maybe in the world. It’s Yankee Stadium, the home of the 2008 All-Star Game and Home Run Derby.

In the final year of the hallowed halls of the House That Ruth Built, it makes perfect sense for the Home Run Derby, baseball’s highlight reel slam dunk contest-like showcase, to feature a Yankee.

Before the Derby began, the Yankees would have taken any Yankee. They would have taken 62-year old Reginald Martinez Jackson… just as long as they had a piece of Yankee folklore in the lineup.

Thanks, A-Rod.

This is a guy that signed a $300-million dollar deal just to break the home run record as a Yankee. This is a guy that brushed off baseball â€" not once, but twice â€" when baseball begged him to step up to the plate to make this one another piece to the monument that is Yankee Stadium.

No other pinstripe was even considered. Jeter isn’t known for his power. Jiambi didn’t make the roster. Rodriguez was the chosen one.

Rodriguez chose to put himself before the game… again.

He ran from the chance to be the highlight attraction that baseball desperately wanted.

Instead of a marquee attraction that Yankee Stadium craved, we got the one thing that it’s most known for.

History.

Insert Josh Hamilton.

I could spend a lifetime telling Hamilton’s story. I think I have already.

While Hamilton was banned from baseball, he had a dream that he was being interviewed after competing in a Derby at Yankee Stadium.

I don’t think he could have dreamed about what happened Monday night.

Yankee fans, the most brutal, evil fans in baseball, were chanting his name.

They roared with every titanic swing from his bat, every 500-foot-plus bomb he crushed into the black seats in center and the farthest reaches of baseball’s Mecca.

While A-Rod was worried about “messing up his swing”, Hamilton was soaking up what was supposed to be A-Rod’s spotlight.
So what if baseball didn’t get what it’d hoped for?

We didn’t get to see a guy that’s done nothing for baseball except show us how drama-filled his life is and try to overshadow the game with every move he makes.

Fine with me.

The night belonged to Josh Hamilton. Everyone else was irrelevant, including the winner of the 2008 Derby, Justin Morneau.