Texas Rangers star Josh Hamilton left yesterday’s game against the Detroit Tigers in the first inning with a broken arm and will now miss 6-8 weeks.
The injury occurred when Hamilton was on third base and Adrian Beltre hit a popup in foul territory between home plate and third base. Tiger’s catcher Victor Martinez gave chase although the ball was eventually caught by Brandon Inge. Brad Penny, who was pitching for the Tigers, didn’t move a step, leaving home plate completely empty and prompting Ranger’s third base coach Dave Anderson to have Hamilton tag up. The end result was Hamilton getting tagged out by Martinez, who raced back to home after the catch was made. To make matters worse, Hamilton made an awkward head-first slide resulting in a broken arm that will sideline the reigning AL MVP for up to two months.
Following the game, Hamilton immediately threw his third base coach under the bus, calling the play “stupid” and saying that he knew something bad would happen. While the call to tag on an infield popup certainly was questionable, Hamilton was completely classless in blaming the coach for his injury. The Rangers have lived and died by playing aggressive baseball over the past year, and the Texas front office has already encouraged Anderson to continue being aggressive.
While the Rangers lose big without Hamilton in the lineup (David Murphy will replace him) they should be able to continue scoring runs with their talented collection of hitters.
The biggest loser is Hamilton, who not only will miss time (which has happened seemingly every year) but also comes off as classless. He could have been hurt on any similar play, the fact that it was a fly ball to the infield had nothing to do with his injury (his awkward slide did, however).
While Hamilton is undoubtedly frustrated and upset at being injured, to blame the coach on a play showed terrible character. With the front office and manager supporting their coach, some amends may have to be made for the organization to stay happy.
It will be interesting to see if Hamilton calms down and apologizes for those remarks.
Used with permission of the author.
Along with contributing to Sports Climax, Brett Kettyle is the Atlanta Braves Community Leader on Bleacher Report and maintains a Braves column for MTR Media. Follow Brett on Twitter.
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