Maybe Josh Hamilton is the real deal. It feels weird to write that, because it seemed overwhelmingly unlikely that Hamilton would succeed in his second stint as a professional baseball player. However, the prevailing hero worship bestowed upon him by the media and the general public for his comeback is deplorable.

A little history: Hamilton dominated high school baseball the way that Ghandi dominated nonviolent resistance, throwing 95 mph as a 17-year-old, recording 159 strikeouts in 87 innings as a pitcher, batting .600+, etc. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays took Hamilton with the No. 1 pick in the 1999 draft and signed him with a $4 million signing bonus. Hamilton did little to disappoint in his professional debut, excelling in the low minors despite routinely being two to three years younger than his competition.

Before the fall

In 2002, the shit hit the fan. Hamilton was suspended for 25 games for violating MLB's drug-abuse policy. He developed massive cocaine and heroin habits, and the following season just disappeared for over a month after reporting to spring training with the Devil Rays. The league suspended him for 30 days, later upgrading the suspension to "indefinite," and Hamilton faded from the public eye, John Frusciante-style, surfacing every year or so as a full-blown junkie in a "What Ever Happened to That Guy?" article in the St. Petersburg Times or Baseball America.

Hamilton got it together in 2006 and was given permission for reinstatement by commissioner Bud Selig. Despite having not played professional baseball for nearly four years, a now-25-year-old Hamilton posted a league-average .687 OPS for the Devil Rays' low-A Hudson Valley Renegades. The Cincinnati Reds then selected Hamilton in the 2007 Rule V draft, and were mocked relentlessly for the decision, including by yours truly, as the terms of the Rule V draft state that teams must keep selected players on their Major League roster for the entire season. As Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus wrote at the time, "Physically, he's still a monster, but to come back after that kind of layoff and do it at the big league level just seems like a near impossibility."

Astoundingly, Hamilton not only remained on the Reds' major league roster for the entire season, but thrived, batting .292 with a .554 slugging percentage and 19 home runs in 298 at-bats. The following offseason, the Reds traded Hamilton to the Texas Rangers for starting pitcher Edinson Volquez. I thought the Reds had done a great job of selling high on a player who had almost no chance of repeating his performance from the previous season. While Volquez has been excellent for the Reds in 2008, the Rangers do not appear to have been ripped off. Hamilton has already eclipsed his numbers from last season, playing an above-average center field with a .974 OPS and 31 extra-base hits. The fact that Hamilton is even able to compete at the major-league level, much less completely dominate, is astonishing.

But the attention paid to Hamilton's "great story" is nothing short of appalling. Amidst the celebration of Hamilton's unbelievable talent, people seem to have forgotten that he fucked up in a big way, losing four years of his life to poor decision-making and a failure to make the most of his abilities. Hamilton is applauded for having come back from drug addiction to regain his stature as one of the country's premier athletic talents; but what if he hadn't gotten the chance? He would be another Len Bias—except Hamilton was lucky enough to have survived. So while Bias became the ultimate metaphor for the dire consequences of substance abuse, Hamilton has become the patron saint of redemption and a champion of the human spirit.

"If you can find a better reason to cheer" than Hamilton's comeback, let Tampa Tribune columnist Joe Henderson know. ESPN's Peter Gammons has said that Hamilton "can be a great model for a lot of kids in this country." Gammons's colleague, Jayson Stark, calls Hamilton "one of the great human stories in America."

You know what's a better story than playing in the majors after losing four years to drug addiction? Playing in the majors without losing four years to drug addiction. While Hamilton was getting high on crack and hanging out in North Carolina tattoo parlors, Albert Pujols was hitting home runs like he was Joe DiMaggio. How is Hamilton's story on that level? Hamilton's fall from grace isn't a great story; it's a near-tragedy with a lucky ending.

So why has December 12 been declared "Josh Hamilton Day" in Raleigh, North Carolina, while A-Rod gets booed in his home stadium? Why are Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds ostracized for having taken drugs while Hamilton is celebrated for having given them up? It probably has to do with redemption. People love to think that no situation is completely hopeless. That is why Marion Barry can find himself elected mayor of Washington, D.C., just two years after being released from federal prison, and it's why the saga of Darth Vader is so interesting. But I'd rather hear more about Pujols.