Too Bad Buck O'Neil Wasn't Here To See This

Watching Josh Hamilton launch homerun after homerun after homerun in the Homerun Derby tonight, all I could think of was a story that I first read in Buck O'Neil's autobiography, "I Was Right On Time" and later in Joe Posnanski's "The Soul of Baseball." Neither book is nearby at the moment, so I'll try to paraphrase as best I can.

As a boy, Buck was hanging around outside a ballpark down in Florida, must've been during spring training, when he heard the unmistakeable sound of ball hitting bat. There was something different about this sound, however, something special, something like a gunshot, and when he got a glimpse at the hitter, he knew why: it was Babe Ruth.

Years later, playing in the Negro Leagues, Buck was in the clubhouse when he said he heard that sound again. It brought him running onto the field (wearing nothing but his underwear, in some accounts), where he found Josh Gibson, the legendary catcher, launching the ball all over the field. Every time the ball hit the bat, it sounded like a bomb going off, the same different sound as the Babe.

After that, Buck didn't hear that sound again for many, many years...until one day in Kansas City in the 1980s, when he stepped onto the field while Bo Jackson was taking batting practice. BOOM...BOOM...BOOM...that same sound, unlike any other, that he was only hearing for the third time in his entire long, baseball-filled life.

Surely, much of that story is just that: a good story. But something Buck said at the end stuck with me, and I thought of it tonight when Josh Hamilton was at the plate: "I'm going to keep going to the ballpark until I hear that sound again."

Midway through the first round, one of the ESPN announcers mentioned that the ball sounded different coming off of Hamilton's bat. Joe Morgan attributed it to the fact that he was hitting everything right on the screws, on the meat of the bat. Sure enough, it began to look like Hamilton couldn't miss. Everything he hit seemed to have a little extra oomph, seemed to carry just a little further than anyone else's. He hit a ball that made me sit up and pay attention, a 502-foot blast off the signage in right, then followed it up with a 504-footer to right-center. He made MY WIFE show some interest in a bunch of millionaires trying to hit a ball out of the ballpark. He made David Ortiz, a guy who has watched Manny Ramirez hit for the last several seasons, say, "Wow..."

And through it all, the most impressive part? The big "I can't believe I'm really here" smile on his face. Seriously, Hollywood, this isn't even a challenge. The script for The Josh Hamilton Story (working title only - we can do better than that) will write itself.

In the second round, my brother messaged me to say that they should rest his pitcher's arm, save it for the finals. Didn't matter, I said. By the time the first round was done, this wasn't about winning or losing anymore. Nobody will remember that Justin Morneau won it in the final round, 5-3. But everybody will remember watching the 27-year-old kid from North Carolina - who when you think about it shouldn't even be here, shouldn't even be capable of hitting a baseball like that after all he has been through in the past few years - as he made the crowd at Yankee Stadium, The House That Ruth Built, chant his name.

(Okay, I take it back. People might remember that Morneau won, but only because State Farm's CEO called him "Jason" and Erin Andrews got caught on camera making a face in response.)