Josh Hamilton, the baseball player who got us thinking about addiction and drug culture in sports the other day,  spoke out wonderfully, as we think we probably mentioned.  We won’t talk your ear off repeating that, but we thought a followup was worthwhile since Hamilton’ s wife blogged publicly and at length about his addiction and what the family’s been going through in recent days.

She speaks movingly about the power of forgiveness and talks about those who say they just can’t forgive her husband his lapse.  That comment made us think about something we didn’t cover the other day, and that’s the pressure that being a role model may put on players in all sports.

The pressure doesn’t come so much from kids who want to be you when they grow up.  It comes from the parents who know that you’re the player that their kid looks up to.  Who have used you as a parenting tool: “I bet Josh Hamilton would have apologized to his sister!” Who now have to explain to their kid why the hero’s in the news with mud on his face.

Being a role model is a heady thing, but a hard one.  And the added pressure is a force to be reckoned with.  But a player who makes a mistake and then owns up to it, who struggles, who is flawed but works to overcome, is the kind of role model we want our children to have.  Hamilton is forgivable, even to those parents, because of how well he takes responsibility and how he keeps trying, day by day.

That’s a lesson all of us could stand to have modeled again, yes?