Saturday, February 4, 2012

Open Letter to Josh Hamilton: What do you want, a medal?

Dear Madam or Sir,

Yesterday, you called a news conference to apologize to the world for recently having "three or four drinks" in a bar. You relapsed, you let us all down, you're soooooooo sorry, so you called in the Kliegs and blinked up an Oprah.

OK, fine, whatever. I guess you had to act: Some lounge lays posed with you groping and guzzling, and we all know that every drop of celebrity water makes its way to Gawker, so you and your publicist fired off a pre-emptive bleat: You're soooooooo sorry. You let everybody down. As a role model for youth, you feel soooooo bad. Humina-humina-humina...

Listen, Slappy, you aren't the first guy ever born with snakes in his head. You aren't the only pro athlete, supermodel or millionaire clump to soil the bed with 90 proof pee. And I don't mean to set you off on a binge by saying this, but you shouldn't worry: You are not a role model for anybody's kids.

Nope. Sorry. That ship sailed. Those of us who are old enough, we remember Mickey. We remember Billy. We remember whole generations. We Mere Mortals of the Faceless Din do not plan to watch with baited breaths to learn whether you beat your celebrated drug and drunk addictions. Believe it or not, we've got our own battles, our own crises - and nobody with half a life to live will base his or her chances of success on you.

Listen: I hope you have a nice life. But frankly, I'm rooting for you to hit .220. You're 30 years old. Soon, you will. (Probably by then, you'll be a Yankee, but that's another matter.) Soon enough, you'll never have to worry about people posting bar pics on Deadspin.

Apologize to your family. Apologize to your team. Spare us your news releases. You didn't let the world down. We are not that stupid.

2 comments:

Bye Bye Balboni said...

Did he say what the three or four drinks were? I mean, if I were a multi-zillionaire who had to call a press conference to apologize to the world every time I had a cocktail, I'd make sure that when I did drink it'd be purely top-shelf stuff.

el duque said...

The first was a frozen strawberry daiquiry with a dollop of whipcream on top.

The second was Sex-on-the-Beach with a little baseball bat swizzle.

The third was a salted Shirley Temple with mix of Vaseline and Castrol 50-50.

The final drink was Josh's own "Elixer of Life," which included gin, vodka, artificial flavoring, masking agent and 100 miligrams of Andro-T Testosreone.