Chapter Ten

Chapter ten begins by talking about how Josh started to acquaint himself with a drug dealer named Pete. Hamilton would go himself or send someone to pick up the cocaine just about every day from Pete's house. Most of the time, Josh would get small amounts of cocaine at a time so it wouldn't be so noticeable to people. Also, Josh would often overpay Pete for the cocaine so that he would like him better.

Josh would always try to hide his drugs from his parents, and he was worried that they may find out his secret. However, one day his parents showed up at his front door, and they were not alone. When Josh opened the door, there were two DEA agents standing beside his parents. The agents told Josh that they had been watching him, and that if they wanted to, they could do a drug bust at his house. However, they weren't after Josh. They were trying to get Pete in order to get to a drug dealer above him. The agents had Josh keep his routine of going to Pete's house, but now he was wearing a wire so the agents could hear what was going on in the house.

Josh decided to give drug rehab another try, but this time he went to Turning Point in Tampa, Florida. There were some points where he really had a lot of problems that angered him. In September of 2003, Josh decided to blow his drug test off which is the same as failing a drug test. He was given a sixty day game suspension. Josh made a decision to have a talk with his former girlfriend's father who was a former drug addict himself. He wanted to get the perspective of someone who knew how he felt and could give him advice. The talk made Josh think a little bit differently, and it helped him somewhat.

However, despite the talk, Josh continued to use drugs, and it was not long before he was suspended from baseball for a year for failing another drug test. This was important because one more suspension would mean a lifetime ban from professional baseball. During his suspension, he lived in a halfway house for his drug rehab, and he had to get a job. He chose a job at a batting cage/baseball school facility. He liked to work with the kids there, and he found it pretty amusing. However, even after staying sober for a couple of months, he never believed that he would be able to keep it up.

Chapter Nine

Chapter nine talks about the start of the 2003 major-league spring training and how Josh was still a mess from drugs. At the beginning of the season, the Rays made a big move by bringing long-time major-league manager Lou Piniella out of retirement to manage the team. In the beginning of the season, Josh and Piniella often got into arguments because Josh was often late for spring training after long nights of drug use. Another problem Josh had was that he started to become paranoid that someone might catch on to his secret. He was worried that someone might go through his things and discover his cocaine. He often tried to avoid people including his teammates. All of this affected his ability to play.

He also couldn't hide the side effects of his drug use. One of these were that he would often become sick. The Devil Rays knew that Josh was having problems so they started to put some rules into place. One of the rules was that he could not cross the bridge from Tampa to Bradenton. This being because most of his problems occurred in Bradenton. However, one day during spring training, Josh went to Bradenton and didn't come back. He stayed there for four days. On the end of the fourth day, Josh called the general manager, Chuck Lamar. Lamar knew Josh was having problems so he came up with a plan to give Josh a ten day leave of absence. This was so that Josh could rest and get refocused. Still even on the leave of absence, Josh continued to use drugs. After his leave of absence, he was sent to Double A in Orlando. However, things continued to get worse and Josh's big league career was spiraling downhill. At this point, Josh had lost interest in baseball and he began to wonder even if he wanted to play anymore.

Chapter Eight

This chapter starts out by talking about how Josh gets flown to the Betty Ford Center for drug rehab. He was very nervous and did not know what to expect once he got there. He did not associate himself with the word addict because he had only done the drug about seven or eight times. The first part of his rehab was to be interviewed by a therapist. He did not like it when the therapist used the word addict, and Josh immediately said that he was not an addict. He did not like the way the therapist was patronizing him and Josh called him an idiot. He did not cooperate at all in group sessions.

The sports psychologist determined that he was an addict and that his parents were a big part of his problem. Josh disagreed with this because he did not think he was an addict or that his parents caused it. All of this really angered Josh, so he no longer spoke to his roommate, and he tried to hide his emotions from everyone. He really did not want to be there, but he wanted to get healthy again and get back on the baseball field. On the eighth day of treatment, Josh decided he couldn't take anymore, so he decided to pack his stuff and leave. He called a cab to take him to a hotel, and then he called his dad to come and pick him up.

Once he returned from the rehab center, Josh came to spring training and the Devil Rays sent him to Class A Bakersfield in the California League. This was his third straight year in Class A ball. He knew for being the number-one pick in the draft, he should be farther along than this. All signs pointed that Josh could still play when he hit a towering 549 foot home run.

However, his problems started again when he used drugs for the first time during a season. One night, Josh stopped at a bar for a couple of drinks and instead he got very drunk. In his drunkenness, he asked the bartender where he could find some cocaine. He did cocaine with the bartender and got no sleep that night. The next night he had a game, and he was worried that any physical exertion might increase his already sky high heart rate. He prayed that if he lived through this game, he would never do drugs again. However, the next day, he needed one or two more lines just to make it through the day.

Josh's 2002 season ended with the Devil Rays just after fifty-six games because of bone chips in his elbow. He went home for awhile and started hanging out with a guy named Wayne. Josh went to school with him, but they were never friends because Wayne was into drugs even in high school. The Devil Rays later sent Josh to play with their Triple A team the Durham Bulls. He dressed every game, but never played. One day before a game, Josh was given a urine test. A couple of days later, he was called into the manager's office and was told that he had failed his drug test. Josh was suspended for fifteen games. It didn't take long for him to get even more involved in drugs. Often times, Josh would send Wayne to go buy some cocaine so that he didn't feel as bad since it wasn't him buying the drugs. Josh's life was getting worse with each day.

Chapter Seven

Chapter seven is about how the Devil Rays sent Josh to a sports psychologist because the team was concerned about his injuries. He didn't really want to go see him, but once they sat down, Josh realized that he liked him. After the interview, the psychologist asked Josh if there was anything else that he wanted to talk about. Josh could have very easily of said no, but instead he said that there was something, and then he told that the past couple weeks he had been using drugs.

The psychologist asked Josh questions like what drugs had he been using, how often did he use the drugs, and with whom did he use the drugs. He answered these questions by telling him that he had done cocaine with the guys at the tattoo parlor seven or eight times. Josh continued by telling him how much that he liked the drug and that he wasn't really concerned about it affecting his play because he hadn't been playing anyway because of his injuries. Josh then told him that one reason why he had been using the drug was because of his frustration with his injuries.

Josh did not know where the discussion would lead to or whether the psychologist would tell the Devil Rays about his drug use. The morning after Josh's conversation with the psychologist, he received a phone call from an employee of the Devil Rays telling him that they were sending him to the Betty Ford Center for rehab. Josh could not believe that the psychologist had told the organization about his drug use. They told him that he would be leaving the next day on a plane for thirty days of treatment. Josh then had to make the toughest phone call of his life by telling his dad that he would fly to Betty Ford the following morning for drug rehab. His dad could not believe what he was hearing, and did not know what to say. Josh told his parents that the Devil Rays were sending him to rehab because he had been experimenting with drugs.

Chapter Five and Six

In chapter five, it talks about how Josh's struggles started to become a nightmare. One of his problems was that his back was not getting better at all. He continued to be in pain almost all the time. As bad as this was though, it still was not his biggest problem.

One day he stayed in the tattoo parlor until closing, and two of the artists named Kevin and Bill asked if Josh wanted to go out somewhere with them. Josh agreed to go with them, but did not bother to ask where they were going and what they planned on doing. Their first stop was a strip club and this was Josh's first time ever being to one. Josh tried to be as cool and calm as he possibly could trying to make Kevin and and Bill like him more. While he was their, he tried his first alcoholic drink. Soon after that, he drank several more and became extremely drunk.

After leaving the strip club, they all went to Kevin's house and they were all having a great time. They were drinking more alcohol when someone pulled out a mirror and started cutting up cocaine. This is when Josh made the mistake of trying cocaine. He then started to use cocaine about every other day with Kevin and Bill. This is something to this day Josh says is the biggest mistake he ever made.

Chapter six talks about some of the last tattoos Josh ever got. He would go into the tattoo parlor, and many times was not even aware of the kind of tattoo that they would put on him. Two of the last tattoos he got was Jesus's face over a cross. He also got one with a demon with no eyes which meant someone with no soul. Josh then realized that this was a spiritual battle going on within him.

Chapter Four

Chapter four tells about when Josh's life started spiraling down hill and his struggles started. These problems began when he got his first tattoo which said, "Hammer." His parents didn't not like this decision to get a tattoo. Josh's mom believed that it was a bad omen for him to get a tattoo. It was not long before Josh had five tattoos on his arms, shoulders, and neck. This was something that not only surprised his parents, but it also shocked his teammates. Some of them could not believe that Josh would do something like this.

Josh now had problems other than the tattoos. One day when he and his parents were traveling down the road, a dump truck ran a red light and rammed into their truck. Josh was not seriously injured, but when the vehicles collided, something happened in his back. After this happened, Josh continuously had pain in his back whenever he would play baseball. Many people started to question whether or not he had the same desire to baseball as he once did.

All this was putting a lot of pressure on Josh, and he also began to wonder if he had the same desire to play baseball. Whenever he would want to get away from baseball, the pain in back and everything else bothering him, he would go to the tattoo parlor and get three or four tattoos at a time. Getting tattoos started to become an addiction for Josh. Sometimes he would spend almost the whole day sitting in a chair allowing someone to put countless tattoos on him. The pain in his back did not improve and it affected his play dramatically. All of these problems started causing many difficulties in his life..

Chapter Three

This chapter talks about how Josh's professional baseball career started out in the minor leagues. The minor league team that he played on was a rookie single A team called the Princeton Devil Rays who are in the Appalachian League. Josh and his parents packed their things and moved down to Princeton where Josh's team was located. This new transition allowed Josh's parents to attend all of his games, and then on away games, they would travel with the team and stay at the same hotel as the team. He would try to spend as much time with his parents as possible during times when he was not playing baseball.

He soon found out that he would get a signing bonus which would be $3.96 million. This was a record for a number-one pick. Plus, he and everyone on the team would be payed $212 a week and would be given twenty dollars a day for meal money. One guy on his team that he became pretty good friends with was named Carl Crawford. Crawford is now an all-star left fielder with the Tampa Bay Rays. Josh would normally sit at a table with him when the team stopped at a Wendy's or McDonald's to eat. On one particular stop at Wendy's, Josh noticed a tattoo of a Rottweiler's face on Carl's arm. Josh told Carl that he too had been thinking of getting a tattoo, but he did not think his parents would like it if he did. Carl responded by telling Josh he was an adult now and that he could make his own decisions now. After that talk, they just laughed and changed the subject.

Later that summer, during a night game at Hunnicutt field in Princeton, there was a thunderstorm moving in from the west. As the manager walked out to the mound to make a pitching change, Josh was in center field like normal, and he noticed the clouds were traveling towards him. Josh kept watching, and then a cloud formation appeared that looked like a demon's face that gave him chills the rest of the game. After the game, he was back in his room and noticed a similar formation that he saw in the clouds on his television set. He then saw an image which he believed was Jesus reaching his arms out to him, and that was when he realized all of these events were connected and meant something important. Josh then started to think about his relationship with Jesus and wondered if it needed to become stronger. He believed in God, but was not extremely religious.

About halfway through the summer, he was transferred to play for a higher ranked A ball team called the Hudson Valley Renegades. This team was in the late stages of a pennant race in the New York-Penn League. The Renegades believed that Josh's parents might become a distraction to him so they had a booster family house Josh. Normally, these families were boosters for the team, and they usually housed two to three players at a time. Josh and his parents did not like this very well, but they had to deal with it. By the end of the season, Josh was awarded the Class A Player of the Year and also got to play in a Futures All-Star game at Turner Field in Atlanta the day before the Major League All-Star game.

Chapter Two

The beginning of this chapter talks about Josh's high school days playing baseball. It goes on to tell how at that point Josh and everyone else knew that he was going to play professional baseball. However, he did have a decision to make concerning whether he would be an outfielder or a pitcher. He finally decided to become an outfielder because he wanted to be able to play every game and also because his favorite part of baseball was hitting.

He could throw around 96 miles an hour, but he still was an extremely good hitter as well. At almost every single one of his games, he had major league scouts from many different teams to see if they were interested in having him on their ball club. There were many teams who were interested in Josh. In fact, he was one of the top rated high school baseball players in the country.

Many people thought he would probably be one of the top one or two picks in the draft. This was impressive because there are not very many baseball players coming straight out of high school that get drafted and are number one overall. The odds were he was either going to get drafted by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays who had the number one overall pick or the Florida Marlins who had the number two overall pick. His competition for the number one overall pick was a young right handed pitcher from Houston who also came straight out of high school named Josh Becket who is now a star with the Boston Red Socks. When the draft started, Josh Hamilton was selected as the number one overall pick by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and thus his professional baseball career had begun.

Chapter One

The book "Beyond Belief" starts out when Josh Hamilton was only six years old. It talks about that even at a young age Josh was an extremely good baseball player. In fact, he was so good that at six years old he played on his brother's eleven year old team. This chapter also talks about how baseball was such a big part of his family's lives. Josh loved baseball with a great passion and would do anything possible to get better.

Josh dominated little league by being able to play pretty much any position. He showed that at a very young age, he would have a good chance to play professional baseball. Hamilton tells some of the stories of his little league days where he had many no-hitters as a pitcher and where in one game, he had five home runs. Even though he knew that he was a very good baseball player, his parents always tried to teach him to be humble. At about age thirteen, he had already started to dream about one day playing in the major leagues.