SARASOTA, Fla. -- Sometimes, the stories we tell aren't really baseball stories.
Sometimes, they're just the stories of human beings -- people who rise, who fall, who sadden us, who inspire us. We only use baseball as a reason to tell those tales.
So we know that if it weren't for baseball, there might be no reason to tell the story of Josh Hamilton right now. But thankfully, baseball has given us that excuse.
Thankfully, one of the great human stories in America is suddenly unfolding in front of us, on these baseball fields beneath the Florida palm trees.
For too long, Josh Hamilton was the talk of baseball for all the wrong reasons. Now he's the talk of baseball for all the right reasons.
He has climbed out of a real-life horror film and back into the uniform of the Cincinnati Reds. And if he keeps playing the way he is playing, he is going to make the Cincinnati Reds, as your standard five-tool reserve outfielder.
ESPN.com - MLB/SPRING2007 - Stark: Hamilton crafting this spring's feel-good story