SAN FRANCISCO -- Hope you're all hunkered down back home as I'm reading some horrific weather bulletins out here on a sunny day in NoCal. Hang in for the next few hours and I'll keep bringing you some World Series updates.
The Rangers have concluded their Media Day festivities (the Giants are up within the next hour) and most of the swarm headed straight for Josh Hamilton (right) when Triples Alley was opened up in AT&T Park. Hamilton never shies away from the struggles of his life, his new connection to Jesus Christ and the momentous day in 2005 when his grandmother confronted him about his drug use after she had taken him in a month earlier. Hamilton has widely pointed to that event as the seminal moment in his life.
Here's the audio from the parts of Hamilton's session I was part of. It's long but it's riveting stuff.
Manager Ron Washington, a winner in life comebacks and in the dugout even if his grasp of grammar is woeful, was relaxed and loose. Asked his reaction when told by GM Jon Daniels that the Rangers had acquired Cliff Lee, Washington cracked up the interview room when he said, "My reaction was good job, Jon. You're the man."
As for Lee, he talked about his 2007 stint in Buffalo after getting sent back to the minor leagues by the Cleveland Indians, his mixed emotions about the Phillies in the NLCS (he was rooting for individual players but ultimately wanted his old team to lose because they traded him to Seattle) and discounted a story in today's editions of USA Today about how his wife was subject to harrassment that included spitting last week in Yankee Stadium.
"You can't control 50,000 people and what they're going to do," Lee said. "There were people spitting off the balcony on to the family section and that's kind of weak. ... Just two or three or four people acting like fools. You can't group them all together. There's always going to be a couple goofballs in the crowd."
Here's Lee's answer to the question he received about 2007.
---Mike Harrington
(www.twitter.com/bnharrington)
Photo: Hamilton takes the field for the Rangers' workout/Getty Images
tagged
World Series
