Hamlin returns looking straight ahead, not back

It is no small blessing that Ken Hamlin is back on a football field in helmet and pads, cleared for collision, before there’s been any final determination of the violent encounter outside a Seattle nightclub last October that put his livelihood, if not his life, in jeopardy.

We’ll take recovery over reckoning, every time.

It means that what could have been tragic gets upgraded to merely senseless. A bad decision can be a caution instead of ruination.

At least that’s what you want to think. It doesn’t hurt to hope.

Hamlin’s return to full-tilt football at Seattle Seahawks training camp was certainly cause for celebration for teammates, coaches and Hamlin himself, even if he downplayed it. Camp being the grind it is and Cheney being what it is, we’ll assume the celebration will be less fraught with danger than the one which spilled out into Pioneer Square and ended with Hamlin in intensive care at Harborview Medical Center.

That was after Seattle’s victory over Houston, Hamlin and some other Seahawks having taken the party to a soda fountain named Larry’s. What happened on the street outside at closing time that night has not yet been completely sorted out by police, apparently, since no charges have ever been brought.

We know there is a surveillance video that shows Hamlin resisting restraint, that there are witnesses who’ve said the Seahawks safety both threw a punch and received one, that Hamlin was ultimately clubbed with a “No Parking” sign mounted on PVC pipe and sustained a fractured skull and cerebral bruising.

And we know that, three hours later, Terrell Milam – identified by his brother as Hamlin’s assailant – was found dead in Seward Park, a victim of gunshot wounds. Police have found no connection between the fight and Milam’s death.

Grim and ugly, all of it. But that was then. And this is training camp.

And in the rosy anticipation of another season, the grim succumbs to a good scrubbing. Now, the only questions are about Hamlin and his fitness and that first real hit and whether he’ll be whole enough to resume his duties at free safety. To be the player he was growing into.

Except that to Hamlin, it’s not a question at all.

“It’s going to be just like the other times when I’m on the field,” he insisted.

“I have been working ever since I got approved to play – I’d be out here working every day doing different things. It’s training camp. I’m here like everybody else and just doing the same work.”

But as secondary mate Kelly Herndon pointed out, it’s not just like everybody else.

“With what happened and the kind of injury he had, you had to be concerned what it might mean for his future,” Herndon said. “To see him back out here with confidence and like he was before, you want a guy like that out there with you.”

This is what athletes and teams do. They move on. Losses and injury and bad press and perilous misjudgments are all lumped together under the heading of adversity, which is always to be overcome. In Hamlin’s case, you can add the fact that he didn’t get to be a part of the Seahawks’ thrilling run to the Super Bowl – and yet he won’t admit that changed his approach any more than his injury has.

“I’m determined anyways,” he said. “I have a chip on my shoulder because I have things to prove for myself, and as a team we have things to prove. I think we’re going out and we have to accomplish things. Attitude doesn’t mean anything.”

Hmm. It might have been nice if that same thought had occurred to Hamlin in the exchange of words and posturing that led to the fight outside the nightclub.

It is impossible to know how much Hamlin’s sad circumstance impacted the 2005 Seahawks emotionally. Herndon acknowledged that “it was like somebody did something to a brother or someone in your family,” but in the next breath noted that you have to “pick it up and play on.” We always conclude that off-field troubles of any are unneeded distractions for a team, when in fact the players are much more pragmatic.

To them, regret is a bigger distraction.

Hamlin was obviously a victim in last October’s mess and surely didn’t deserve what happened to him – but he also put himself in the position to be a victim. It didn’t have to happen. Nor did the two DUIs that he incurred in college at Arkansas. Neither of those had tragic outcomes, either – more cause for thanks, but also cause for concern as to how trouble seems to find him.

But Hamlin is not indifferent to the bigger picture. He’s “grateful” to be back on the field. He thinks about the good fortune of that “every day.” There has been, he insisted, re-evaluation and perspective.

“You have to sit back and think about those type of things,” he said. “But I’m out here at training camp to get ready for the season. That’s my focus.”

Recovery, not reckoning.

“People said a lot of prayers for Ken,” Herndon said. “Now you see a guy getting another opportunity. You hope it works out for him.”