As a student at Tulane University, with one eye on professional baseball and the other trained in the distance on medical school, Mark Hamilton huddled with teammates to outlast one hurricane and was there, packing for evacuation, as Katrina roared toward New Orleans. Almost 15 years later, he sensed a familiar tone in class emails, in warnings, and in the stockpiling of supplies at the hospital, his school, and his New York City neighborhood.
It was clear "the storm is brewing," he said.
This time, he's ready to walk out into it.
On Friday, nearly nine years after he last played for the Cardinals, former first baseman Mark Hamilton will become Dr. Mark Hamilton, a graduate of the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. As with other medical schools, the traditional hooding ceremony will be adjusted for online participation, and graduation has been accelerated, moved up a month. It's more than a response to a global pandemic and the country's coronavirus crisis. It's a mobilization. Hamilton, 35, is scheduled to begin his residency at a Long Island hospital in June _ unless needed earlier in New York, which has become the nation's super-collider for COVID-19.
"I know eventually _ I know I'm going to be in the fray," Hamilton said Monday evening. "I wanted to be in this field. I'll take that responsibility."
The son of a doctor and father of two daughters, Hamilton paused when asked if that next step he will make, out of a cap and gown he may not wear and into a mask and other protective gear he must, is scary.
"I think that's a fair word to use," he said. "For a lot of people it is a matter of life and death. Am I scared? Yes, but appropriately so. I'm scared for what this means for everybody. When the consequences are this significant, as significant as they can be, you have to rely on your preparation. In a big game, there is the fear, the anxiety, the apprehension to perform. But people who succeed channel that into focus. You do what you're supposed to do.
"Scared. Concerned. Fearful. But prepared _ and ready to serve."
The 76th overall pick in the 2006 draft, Hamilton debuted on Baseball America's prospect rankings at No. 13 in the Cardinals system. Despite a promotion from the New York-Penn League after only 30 games, he still tied for the league lead in homers in 2006. By 2010, he hit 20 homers in the minors and, as a late-season callup, debuted that same season. The next year, he played in 38 games for the Cardinals and later received a World Series ring by being a part of that 2011 team. But the sock he showed with 108 minor-league homers and an .840 OPS at Class AAA never joined him in the majors, and despite playing three more seasons as a pro his last big-league at-bat was as a pinch-hitter for Jason Motte, on July 6, 2011, vs. Cincinnati.
Throughout his baseball career, Hamilton talked about a second act in medicine. His father, Dr. Stanley Hamilton, is now the department of pathology's chair at City of Hope medical center in California, and following that lead always drew Hamilton. He gave himself until age 30 to establish a career in the majors, and after a season in Atlanta's organization and an offseason talk with his wife, Lauren, walked away from baseball and onto campus at Tulane to finish his undergraduate degree. He was not the same as when he left after his junior year.
"Baseball _ it matured me," Hamilton said. "In my 30s, it gave me a different perspective _ by playing internationally, seeing what people didn't have, what opportunities I did have. I had to grow up. It absolutely taught me how to dedicate yourself to a craft. If you have a big goal, no one is going to hand it to you. Guys like (Yadier) Molina _ that's where I saw it. It takes a lot of work to get to the top, but it doesn't stop there, it continues."
As Hamilton explored his options for medical school, he was invited to a dinner in the New York City area and a chance to meet with an official from Hofstra University's medical school.
Dr. David Elkowitz recalled the moment immediately before meeting Hamilton.
"I don't get a chance to be around professional athletes, so the first thing that you notice is when Mark walks into a room _ it's the size of this guy," said Dr. Elkowitz, associate dean and also an associate professor of pathology at Zucker. "His hands. His height. He's big all the way around. At dinner, I'm not only sizing Mark up, but also talking to him about the curriculum, what we could offer him. He had this spirit of excellence."
In his first year, Hamilton had a class with Dr. Elkowitz and over his four years in school they became close. Dr. Elkowitz said part of that had to do with the students being there and being there with him as he fought two types of cancer _ colon and thymic carcinoma. Now cancer free, he described this week how Hamilton and other students went through a familiar evolution, "from student entering medical and now ready to leave as colleagues." Dr. Elkowitz then added a personal note.
"He will be Dr. Hamilton," the associate dean said, "and he'll be very much a colleague and he could be my doctor."
In 22 years in academics, Dr. Elkowitz said he's never experienced a spring like this. Match Day, a defining day for fourth-year medical students as they learn of their residency selection, was held via a Zoom conference call because of social distancing and government restrictions. At a traditional graduation, Hamilton's father, as a physician, would have been invited to place the doctoral hood on his son. There won't be such ceremony Friday. Dr. Elkowitz added how usually graduates will take time off, rest, and get their bearings at a new hospital, or even a new city.
He's been told how some students intend to get to work, as soon as requested, as the coronavirus rages and a medical system strains.
"Whether it's cancer or a virus, if you're a good doctor, you respect your adversary," Dr. Elkowitz said. "I'm sure there is a lot of anxiety, but people come into medicine to do exactly this _ to treat, to help, and to get a chance to make a difference."
The path Hamilton found to do that was through an interest in interventional radiology. He described it as the practice of an "extremely targeted" procedure meant to capture images inside the body to help diagnose medical issues and injuries and, in some cases, treat them. It's a field of medicine that has applications fighting cancer, heart disease, viruses, and beyond. Accepted for residency at Northwell's Long Island Jewish Medical Center and North Shore LIJ, Hamilton will have six years of residency ahead of him _ "Kind of like the minor leagues of medicine, in a way," he said _ and his first year will be in internal medicine. Whether he starts in June or earlier, he has been told a majority of the patients are now COVID-19.
He has been thinking about what the means for him and for his wife and their two daughters, Lillian (9) and Madison (6). He had just done some home-schooling with them when he took the dog, Monty, for a walk around their Queens neighborhood and continued an interview about what Friday means, what awaits him after it.
"I think (Gov. Andrew) Cuomo said this is like a slow-moving hurricane, and he's right," Hamilton said. "This has a different feel. A hurricane you can see winds going crazy, streets flooding, and you know something is wrong right outside. When you look outside now it's 62 degrees, sunny, and everything seems right in the world. And it's not. It's humbling that the world can be brought to its knees by something you can't see, but you know it's there."
He walked farther down the block, described what it's been like to go to grocery stores with a mask on, to stroll through his neighborhood, and then an ambulance siren blares nearby, drowning out his answer to a question. The siren ricocheted off a nearby building and receded.
"They're nonstop," he said. "Hear them all the time."
He resumed talking about what it will be like starting in June.
Three times he described the virus as "relentless."
Then he paused.
"If they ask, if they need the reinforcements," said Hamilton, days away from being a doctor. "If they call me to come in, I'm coming."
