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Josh Hamilton Quit Using Chewing Tobacco, Still Doing Crazy Pregame Rituals

Josh Hamilton recently stopped using chewing tobacco, apparently at God’s direction. Pedro Gomez tells us it had some adverse effects at the plate during the first week or so, and during his explanation on ESPN, we were treated to some bizarre pregame rituals with Hamilton and his teammates that included them slapping each other in the face.

It’s a pretty good anecdote, a guy who has had plenty of battles with addiction kicking yet another bad habit and clearly expressing his faith in relation to the decision. For athletes, who may be the most superstitious group of people on earth, it’s a pretty big deal to give up what amounts to an every day ritual. And according to Gomez, Hamilton seems to be coming back from his initial withdrawals to raise his performance at the plate back to “still dipping” levels.

But the patty cakes and other associated slap rituals the Rangers are doing during this video really caught our eye – especially the slaps and the “washing the face routine” near the end…

While it’s not quite at the level of the Jeremy Lin and Landry Fields book ritual (which they may not be able to perform anymore if they are really headed to different teams) they’ve put some practice in, and it shows. We need to get the folks in the Abrams Media offices to start doing a few of these every morning, really up our game.