Casey Affleck Developing a Film about Baseball Superstar Josh Hamilton

Today, Texas Rangers’ star Josh Hamilton is known as possibly the most fearsome slugger in Major League Baseball but anyone remotely familiar with his past knows it wasn’t an easy journey. As a young 15-year-old prodigy able to throw a fastball at 96 mph, he was selected with the first pick of the 1999 MLB draft by the Tampa Bay Rays.

However, following a car accident that also sent his parents to the hospital, an injured Hamilton fell prey to drug addiction which eventually led him to be kicked out of professional baseball after multiple failed drug tests. At rock bottom, Hamilton was confronted by his grandmother as well as his future wife, leading him to face his own devils. He took a job as a groundskeeper at a training facility in Florida and became a devout Christian, paving the way for his much-documented comeback.

Finally, the Cincinnati Reds took a chance on the oft-troubled outfielder in 2007 and traded him to the Texas Rangers the next season where he blossomed into the MVP-type player he is today.

Talk about a story that is almost too perfect for a movie. Deadline now reports that Hamilton has entrusted the rights to his life story to producer Basil Iwanyk and Thunder Road Pictures. Casey Affleck (I’m Still Here) will write and direct the feature film. It would only be his second directorial effort so let’s hope Affleck will be up to the task. It certainly will be interesting to see who takes on the starring role. Michael Fassbender, anyone?

Here is what Iwanyk had to say about the project:

“It’s also tailor-made for a movie: it has the mythic quality of The Natural, the faith-based angle of The Blind Side, and faith is a major part of our story, and the romance of Walk the Line. Casey has totally captured those elements in his take for the movie. It is an extraordinary odyssey that took him from the depths of drug addiction, estrangement from his family, and suspension from baseball to a spectacular rebirth of his life, faith, marriage and major league career.”