Most boys when they were seven or eight years of age dreamed of becoming a professional athlete.  Then, as they turned twelve or thirteen, most only dreamed of dating a girl from Playboy.  A few years later, most of us are done playing sports, at the end of our high school days, seeing our dreams end on some football field in October, or a basketball court in March.  Well the dream doesn’t always end for a select few, one being Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels.

Hamels, 23, was the Phillies first round draft pick in 2002.  Hailing from San Diego, Hamels has been making a lot of news.  Unfortunately, most of it seems to be away from the baseball diamond.  Hamels is yet to record a major league win, but has already achieved a celebrity status in Philadelphia.

One reason is his relationship with Playboy playmate, and former Survivor castaway Heidi Strobel.  Strobel took part in the sixth season of the series, Survivor: The Amazon, and was notorious for stripping during an endurance competition with fellow castaway Jenna Morasca, in order to win Oreos and peanut butter. (In case you were wondering, I looked into it and she doesn’t have a sister.) After the show had concluded, Strobel was featured on the cover for the August 2003 issue of Playboy with the aforementioned Morasca. While Hamels is yet to record a big league win on the field, off the field this is the equivalent to a complete game shutout.  One dream down.

Not many primarily minor league athletes have playmate girlfriends.  Most also don’t have a website portraying them in a status fit for superheroes.  Colehamelsfacts.com is a website listing humorous and fictitious anecdotes about Hamels.  These range from “Cole Hamels will win 1 Cy Young... and 11 Cole Hamels“, to “Cole Hamels is pro-steroids. He wants to give opposing teams a fighting chance.”  Most Phillies fans have high hopes for the young prospect.  The site which has been running for only a month, was created by a few Phillies fans after Hamels pitched a 7 inning shutout with 14 strikeouts in a AAA game last month. 

Adding to Hamels’ legend, is an incident that occurred this past February in a Florida bar.  Hamels missed spring training last year after getting in a bar fight in which he broke a bone in his pitching hand.  Hamels portrayed himself as the victim to authorities.  However, eyewitnesses and authorities later acknowledged that Hamels’ and his group of friends were indeed the culprits.  The incident, combined with back problems, led to Hamels rarely playing in 2005 in the Phillies minor league system. The injury problems didn’t end there however.  Currently, he is on the Disabled List with back problems after starting two games this year for the Phillies.

Philadelphia is not the easiest place in the sports universe to have a career however.  The town has hit Santa Claus with snowballs, cheered when a motionless Michael Irvin laid on the old turf at Veterans stadium, and booed the selection of Donovan McNabb over Ricky Williams at the NFL draft, before McNabb had even taken an NFL snap.  “He seems like he’d be a fun guy to go get a beer with,” says Derek Giangiulio, a 20 year old lifetime Phillies fan.  “I’m not sure how well he’s being accepted in this town.  He’s being perceived as too Hollywood for Philadelphia.  If he starts winning games, the fans won’t care [about his image] anymore though.”  This is a city which many of its residents feel they are the most cursed sports city in America.  This city is desperate for a championship.  The last title in Philadelphia was the 1983 NBA Finals, a drought of 23 years. Since this date, the Eagles have lost a Super Bowl, the 76ers have lost a NBA Finals, the Flyers tanked in 3 Stanley Cups, and the Phillies in 1993 lost to a Canadian team in a World Series.  That just hurts. This is the longest such drought of any city boasting a professional sports team in all 4 major sports.  The last true championship the city had was Villanova in the 1985 NCAA Final Four.  Is Hamels part of the solution for the Phillies?  If he starts winning games, and can stay healthy the fans will certainly rally around him.  However if he never makes it in the big leagues, he might as well wear a Terrell Owens jersey out on the mound.