Josh Hamilton and the Rangers held a press conference Friday afternoon to confirm reports that Josh had been out drinking earlier this week. The statement, which according to Josh was not pre-written, was about 12 minuets long. Here are a couple of quotes from Josh’s statement.
“When I don’t do that off the field, I leave myself open for a weak moment and I had a weak moment on Monday night in Dallas, personal reasons with a family member. [We] walked to a restaurant to have some dinner, did just that, had dinner and ended up ordering a drink and probably had three or four drinks.
“It doesn’t excuse the fact that I was doing something that doesn’t work for me. No drugs were used at all, [I] never thought about it. I’ve had two drug tests since Monday, so I had no concerns there at all.”
“It was just wrong and that’s all it comes down to,” Hamilton said. “I needed to be in a different place, I needed to be responsible at that moment, that period, and I was not responsible, so those actions of mine have hurt a lot of people that are very close to me. But as far as baseball and the Rangers, they’ve shown nothing but support for me and tell me they’ll continue to support me.
“After this happens and praying about it, I cannot take a break from my recovery. My recovery is an everyday process. When I take that one day off it leaves me open for a moment of weakness.” (source)
So where does that leave Rangers fans? Should they be worried about their all star outfielder and one of the faces of the franchise, especially while he is going through contract negotiations? I asked a simple question on twitter earlier today, what did you think of the press conference? Here are some of the responses:
@CannonMark “these haters should look up Matthew 7:5″
@AdamGordon1977 ” Glad he gave it. It happened and he wants to leave it in the past. Fans should respect his decision.”
@LizBrowder “hard to watch..BUT he took responsibility…NOW he needs to remember how this feels.”
@TheWayRangersGo “I thought it was great. Didn’t spare the details. Should really help squash the story quickly.”
I agree with most of the commentors that I got. We as Rangers fans should find it to move on from this pretty quick and trust Josh when he says that he has learned from it. Unless you suffer from an addiction yourself, it is very hard to know what it feels like to constantly battle yourself for control. I think that Josh has done a great job so far, and I for one, am not going to give up on him because of this. Lets band together as Rangers fans and pray for Josh and his family to get through what has happened, and then lets go back to getting ready for spring training! Josh, most of us out here want you to know you have our support.
