Mothers Day is the most important day of the year. Sure we love our fathers but it’s mom who rules the roost and it’s mom who we all have to do right by. Everyone knows this and everyone does their very best to make certain that mom is happy. None of us want to make our mother cry or hear that she is disappointed. None of us want to feel her wrath or see her tears. You just don’t mess with them.
With that in mind, here are two players in 2012 thus far who have made their mom unhappy, angry or happy as in that’s my boy and I’m proud of him.
Josh Hamilton likely caused his mother some consternation while constantly running afoul of the law and running with some unsavory types a few years ago. The story of his lost three years is well-known. There was no way this kid could miss being one of the elite in baseball if only he could straighten up his act and find someone who could set him once again on the straight and narrow.Tampa Bay in those days, were the laughing stock of baseball and could ill afford to waste a first round pick. Hamilton was going to be their savior and the first in a long line of great players who would lift the franchise not only to respectability, but to success. Those hopes seemed dashed as Hamilton time after time became involved in criminal activities and seemed to be easily influenced by the wrong type of people. Hamilton turned things around in a big way.
Now, I don’t know if his mom or a motherly figure in his life helped turn him around. I know little of his personal life or his upbringing and I do know that even kids raised with dignity and respect can go bad. I do know that if he has a mom, she would have been secretly crying in her pillow at night and hoping against hope that Hamilton would one day pull himself together. Not for any baseball rewards, but simply for his own good.
We all know people, ordinary people like you and me, who have wasted any talent they might have had for whatever reason and fell into the depths of crime and/or addiction. Those of us who have kept our nose to the grindstone have usually had a mom who we hoped never to embarrass no matter if we were only the lowest level office worker or the most famous person on the planet. She always seemed proud of us as long as we were productive members of society and respected others and became responsible adults.
It was always important to my mom that if I made a commitment, I honored that commitment no matter how things were going at any particular time. You signed on and had to see it through, good times and bad. That was part of being an adult.
Moms make the world go round. I lost mine in 1973 but I still hear her voice when I do something stupid, which, sadly, is a full time job for her. Love you mom– always.