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Also suggesting a ball up the middle would be justice isn’t technically wishing for it either. One might defend Hamilton because one act is intentional and the other is not. 1įor the purposes of this conversation let’s all agree that Tom Hamilton might have misstepped slightly when he spoke of Nick Swisher smoking a ball back up the middle-”off the pitcher’s temple”-as some kind of justice for a guy intentionally throwing at a batter’s head. Point being that even if Tom Hamilton has five minutes of somewhat questionable commentary every single season, he’s not doing too bad. Tom Hamilton joined the Tribe in 1990 so he’s been doing this job for over 20 years. Yes, I know he sometimes misses games, and I know he doesn’t call every inning of every game. I’ve used questionable judgment to try to be protective of people, but Tom Hamilton is far different.Ĭonsider this: If Tom Hamilton talks about baseball on the radio for the average two hours and 45 minutes that it takes to play a baseball game and does so for 162 games, that’s 445.5 hours of play-by-play per season.
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I also believe I was at the debut game for John Rocker as a Cleveland Indian and stood and applauded as he aggressively sprinted to the mound. I tried to support Albert Belle at various points in my life whether he was running over a second baseman, or attempting to run down some Halloween vandals in his SUV. We’ve all played with fire in that realm. Make no mistake: I’m not saying that it is the job of Indians fans to support bad behavior. After thinking about it and discussing it on Twitter, my conclusion is just to wonder why Tom Hamilton’s enormous, well-documented track record doesn’t count for something. But for whatever reason rather than having that response to a situation, some portion of the population would prefer to engage in some kind of witchhunt to try and define everyone by their worst moments and have them extrapolated to the furthest negative degree. Try and understand what an otherwise good man was caught up in when he said something that might have you questioning him. It’s so very simple, but it’s also perfect. What if Chris Perez had thrown those same two pitches at Joey Votto? To his credit, Richard Skinner didn’t overreact talking to Levine and Carman and said that he told his Cincy-based audience yesterday afternoon to put themselves in Indians fans’ shoes. Just a guess, but Hamilton would probably re-write exactly what he said if he had the chance. He was as understandably energized by the play as anyone who was watching it. It was Hamilton’s opinion that Aroldis Chapman had intentionally thrown at the head of Nick Swisher. I’m sure most Indians fans have seen the clip by this point, but when Nick Swisher saw a 100 mile-per-hour fastball barely miss the brim of his helmet, Tom Hamilton became about as incensed as I’ve ever heard him. I also read the post at Cleveland Frowns yesterday as well as most of the comments there. I was listening to Les Levine and Ken Carman talking to Richard Skinner, a radio personality from Cincinnati, on the topic of Tom Hamilton and his reaction to Nick Swisher getting buzzed by Reds relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman.