Angels paid heavily to coldly dump Josh Hamilton

On a mid-December day, what seems like forever ago, Josh Hamilton was asked if the Los Angeles Angels were right to believe in him.

The sun shined. The cameras clicked. Optimism hovered like a halo. His wife and four daughters sat before him, as did Angels owner Arte Moreno, as did the rest of his baseball career. He was 31 years old, lucky in some ways to have made it there, but there nevertheless, rich many times over and about to be feathered into a lineup that already held Mike Trout and Albert Pujols.The press conference was held in what amounted to a bar, which was how certain the Angels were of their belief in him, the recovering alcoholic and drug addict.

“It comes to a point of making choices,” Hamilton said that day. “What choices are you going to make?”