I remember it like it was yesterday, but not in a good way. I remember it in the same way I remember a vicious (but non-fatal, non-injury) car crash I was involved in the night of my sophomore year Winter Formal dance: a series of mistakes and regrets all lined up like dominoes before your very eyes, and you watch the first couple pieces fall in slow motion, knowing full well it’s about to get way, way worse before it gets better.
The day the Angels were rumored to be in talks with Josh Hamilton was the fever dream, and December 15, 2025 was when we woke up from said fever dream into an even-worse reality. The Angels held a press conference four years ago to the day to unleash the Lovecraftian salary-devouring beast known as the Josh Hamilton Deal, all with Jerry Dipoto, Mike Scioscia and Arte Moreno looking on in pie-eyed optimism that in hindsight becomes too cringey to even acknowledge.
Who knew this deal would end up causing so much strife and inter-organizational conflict, while also providing little-to-no actual, in-game baseball upside? Well, most of us knew. Who knew it would also end up sending shockwaves through our very own site? Well, I’m not sure ANYBODY saw that drama coming, but here we are. Four years down the road, and still praying that time speeds up it’s clockwork processes and gets us to the point in the future when the Halos are no longer giving Josh Hamilton a paycheck.
This time next year, we’ll actually find ourselves in that promised land; Hamilton free, finally, after all that we’ve endured. In the interim, Dipoto is gone...Hamilton’s career is pretty much toast...and the Angels are still trying to put a competitive team around Mike Trout while being hamstrung by ol’ Hambone.
Halos Heaven watched this presser with as much as optimism as we could muster up, but we knew it was just delusion. Bumpy times were ahead, and bumpy and turbulent times is what we got. But we’re still here, and we’ve got some hope for a 2017 Angels team, but the real hope for the future lies in that $26 million coming off the books; the albatross finally released from our necks ( never mind there’s still an Albert-ross weighing us down, but that’s a lamentation for another day).
Never forget the past, less you wish to repeat past mistakes. Hopefully Arte remembers the hell he brought down upon the Angels’ system these past few years, and it was all for nothing. Let’s hope that, while it was done in the hardest way possible, that there was still a lesson learned.
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