ARLINGTON, Texas - In two weeks, Texas Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton turned Yankee Stadium taunts of ''Josh smokes crack'' into awe-struck cries of ''Ham-il-ton.''

The former No. 1 pick with the remarkable story of recovery from drug addiction did it with a dazzling display of power during the All- Star Home Run Derby. The Raleigh, N.C., native lapped the field nearly four times in the first round with a record 28 homers Monday night.

Long before hitting 500- foot exhibition blasts or taking 95 RBIs into the All-Star break, Hamilton had just this sort of conversion in mind. He was prepared to tell his story - frequently, without growing weary of the questions - when he emerged from a three-year fog of drug and alcohol abuse.

It was one of the first things he and general manager Jon Daniels talked about a few days before last Christmas, when the Rangers were completing a trade with Cincinnati.

''He said, 'Hey, I get it. I know the better I do and the better the team does, the bigger platform I'm going to have to deliver the message,''' Daniels said.

The message: God spared him from self-destruction and gave him a second chance to prove that the Tampa Bay Rays weren't crazy when they gave a high school kid a record signing bonus of more than $3.5 million in 1999.

Hamilton never played for Tampa, eventually getting banned from baseball for two years while he fought addiction and burned through all that cash. He emerged last year in Cincinnati, a $50,000 Rule 5 pickup who made the team by hitting .403 in spring training. After a solid 90- game season with the Reds, he came to Texas for pitcher Edinson Volquez, another first-time All-Star this year.

Two weeks before the All- Star break, Hamilton made his Yankee Stadium debut in right field for the Rangers, the perfect target for a tough crowd that spares no one. The sudden transformation this week illustrated just how big his platform could get.

''Obviously the better you are, the more people are going to listen. That's the way the world is,'' Hamilton said. ''At the same time, if I wasn't doing well, I'd still be talking about what God's done in my life.''