Cole Hamels is looking to reclaim his throne as a baseball king, while Scott Atchison is just trying to claw his way back into the kingdom to facilitate the special care his 2-year-old daughter needs for her rare genetic disorder.
Hamels' rise and fall has been well-documented, but Andy Martino did a decent job recapping it and adding insight from the pitcher as he attempts to return to dominance. This comeback is in part inspired by his new son, Caleb:
The baby stared at unfamiliar objects with fierce interest and approached challenges with a determination that struck his father as admirable. And after enduring the most serious setbacks of his athletic life, Hamels embraced the inspiration.
"Kids never quit," the pitcher, now 26, said last week, smiling when asked about his son. "They're going to fall down a million times before they learn how to walk. There's something I can learn from that in baseball, about how you have to get beat down in this game before you finally fix yourself."
From a PR standpoint, I'm most impressed that in another part of the article Hamels says he will try to think before he speaks because he has realized how his statements can be perceived differently from how he means. He even boned up on making innocuous statements by watching other athletes' post-game comments in the offseason.
While lacking the name and panache of Hamels, Atchison's story is more interesting. Back from Japan, the 33-year-old hopes to squeeze onto the Red Sox roster to be closer to the hospital in Dallas where his daughter gets treatment for thrombocytopenia-absent radius.
This is some heady inspiration for a guy trying to make his way into a bullpen chock-full of established stars:
There are no guarantees for Atchison this spring. He must fight his way through an overcrowded clubhouse, stuffed with low-cost, last-chance relievers itching to be the 25th man on the roster. That spot will go to a pitcher who can get lefthanders out, and Atchison will have a chance.
[...]
"Theo [Epstein] told me I'd have a chance to win a spot, and that's all I can ask for," Atchison said. "I'm getting a little older. I need to be somewhere where they're going to contend because that's who's going to use somebody in my position, whereas a team that's not going to contend might be looking at younger guys and I don't really fit that bill anymore."
Needless to say, the Atchisons have have some supporters here at SoxandPhils.
More on sharing pitches: The other day, Hamels acknowledged patterning his cutter after Jon Lester's. In today's column, Nick Cafardo casually mentions that Roy Halladay learned his sinker from Derek Lowe. I'm not sure if I knew that, nor whether I'm particularly pleased presuming that this occurred when D-Lowe was still a Sox and Doc still a Jay. Unless Halladay promised to never use the devastating pitch against the Red Sox.
1 comment:
These kind of personal interest stories do tend to tug at your heart strings. Making the roster would certainly garner a bevy of interest from the media and showcase the cause for his child.
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