Hurdle-ing a rocky road

After setbacks in life, Rockies manager has learned to keep things in perspective

McClatchy Newspapers

Published October 18, 2007 at midnight

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He is a reformed alcoholic, a failed former baseball prospect, and a failed husband (twice). All those things are very much a part of who Clint Hurdle is today, but they are not why a large and loving family is worried about him.

No, they're a bit stressed because Hurdle is captaining one of the most improbable playoff runs in baseball history.

The Colorado Rockies, last place for 40 straight days, fourth place with 14 games left, are in the World Series for the first time ever.

So they want to know. Mom, dad, wife Karla, cousin Peggy, everyone. How ya holding up, Clint?

"I was born to do this," he always says.

For the longest time, the baseball world thought Hurdle was born to be a superstar player, not manager.

He was 6-foot-3 with a Florida tan, cowboy looks and a homecoming king way about him. A good enough athlete that Miami signed him to compete with Jim Kelly at quarterback. Sure enough in himself that as a high school senior he used a postseason banquet to crush his school's fans for being too tough on the coaching staff.

Advanced enough in his talents that Sports Illustrated put him on the cover in 1978, age 20, under the headline "This Year's Phenom." Hurdle hit 32 home runs in parts of 10 seasons, and ever since, each time a highly hyped prospect struggles, somebody somewhere wonders, Is this the next Clint Hurdle?

In Hurdle's six years as manager, the Rockies have gone from a nowhere franchise defined by wild and failed free-agent spending to a model organization built on homegrown stars fueling perhaps the greatest late-season run in base-ball history.

And that's nothing compared to the evolution that Hurdle's done himself.

"This is what he was meant to do, manage," says Hurdle's father, Clint Sr. "Clint is enjoying managing more than he enjoyed playing, I really think that."

Hurdle isn't just a jock. Straight-A student in high school except for one B — in driver's ed. His office is packed with around 1,000 CDs, all different kinds, and he's an avid reader. He has a photographic memory, to the point he'll ask bench coach Jamie Quirk things like, Hey, remember back on May 4 two years ago, this guy hit a two-strike pitch the other way for a double?

"Every time," Quirk says, "I'm like, 'No, Clint, I don't remember that.'"

Clint Hurdle made his major-league debut on Sept. 18, 1977, with what some still say is the greatest Royals team of all-time. His second at-bat? Home run into the fountains at Royals Stadium.

His third big-league game he hit cleanup, and his second career home run bounced off a sign in the right-field fountains, went over the fence and out of the ballpark. The kid was a hitting savant, the reason the Royals felt comfortable trading John Mayberry — even though Hurdle had never played first base in his life.

"He was the can't-miss prospect," says former teammate Paul Splittorff.

"Power, power, power," says Art Stewart, who scouted Hurdle. "The All-American boy."

That now-infamous Sports Illustrated cover came out during spring training of 1978, before he'd even played a full season in the big leagues. He was a 20-year-old kid, good looks, making big money, and already a star.

On and off the field.

There are people who will tell you that during his baseball career Hurdle wasn't always concentrating first on baseball. Too many late nights, too much living the life of a star athlete before playing like a star athlete.

"He was full of piss and vinegar," says Gary Martz, a minor-league teammate. "There's no doubt about that."

Hurdle's lifestyle back then is what many blame for his unfulfilled potential. But those who know Hurdle, those close to him, often say the Royals rushed him, and the rest of the baseball world expected too much too soon.

Whitey Herzog was the manager, and when he saw the imposing new prospect, thought he had the next great slugger. But Hurdle had always been more of a line-drive hitter, doubles in the gaps, and a tug-of-war developed between Herzog and Charley Lau — who saw more George Brett than Reggie Jackson.

By the end, Hurdle was a confused and former phenom, and nobody was able to figure out where all that raw talent went. The Royals traded him after four seasons, and he changed teams three more times in parts of 10 seasons, reinventing himself as a catcher in the minor leagues along the way.

The next great thing was done at 29, with a .259 batting average in 515 career games.

"I remember coaches saying that as a staff, they were frustrated because what he showed when he first got to the big leagues, they were unable to get him back to that," Splittorff says. "The quick hands, the bat speed. He showed it, he had it, and they were kind of disappointed that as a staff they couldn't get him back to that point."

There is a long line of friends and former teammates who will tell you that Clint Hurdle was the last man in the world they would've expected to become a big-league manager.

Gerry Hunsicker is not among them.

"There was a certain degree of controversy surrounding him because of maybe some of the things he had been associated with growing up as a player," says Hunsicker, a longtime baseball executive. "I always saw that as a strength, because I think he learned to deal with various issues, and more importantly, recover from them."

Hunsicker, then the Mets' farm director, hired Hurdle as a minor-league manager in 1988. Hurdle was only 30, and already his second baseball life had begun. The evolution from happy-go-lucky night owl to respected authority figure had begun.

He started at the bottom, with Class A St. Lucie, and his team won the league championship. The next year, they won the first- and second-half titles. From there, Hurdle moved steadily up the minor-league ladder: Class AA Jackson, then Williamsport, then Class AAA Tidewater and Norfolk. All with the Mets.

Hurdle had friends in the organization, many of whom pushed for him when the Mets looked for a manager in 1993. Dallas Green got the job, and after the season, Hurdle asked out of the organization. He saw the signs, and figured if he was going to make it back to the majors, it would have to be somewhere else.

"I used to kid him," Hurdle's father says. "'Clint, why don't you just quit and get a real job?' He'd laugh at me, and that was about it. When he wants something, he's not going to quit. He's had to swallow his pride a few times. That wasn't the first time, but it probably was one of the hardest."

Hurdle was hired almost immediately by the Rockies as their roving minor-league hitting instructor. After three years, he was promoted to Colorado's hitting coach, and lasted through three managers. He was in his sixth season there when the Rockies fired Buddy Bell and gave Hurdle, finally, that big-league managing job.

From there, all he had to do was survive five straight losing seasons — research by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch found that no manager had ever had a losing record his first five seasons and kept his job.

Along the way, he and his wife had two children, including 5-year-old Madison, who was born with Prader-Willi Syndrome, a rare and complex genetic disorder that causes low muscle tone, developmental delays, morbid obesity and cognitive disabilities.

Hurdle was extremely close to being fired in the middle of this season, but the Rockies got hot at the right time. Funny, isn't it? The man who received little patience from organizations as a player and failed finally found a place willing to stick it out with him.

And look where the Rockies are now.

"(A television reporter) in Denver dropped the words 'crushing' and 'debilitating' on me after a loss," Hurdle says. "And it was just kind of funny at that time because that day I had gotten a call from a mother at Children's Hospital that wanted me to come by and see her son before he was going to pass that night. That was debilitating.

"Crushing was when a doctor told me my little girl was born with a birth defect. Baseball is a game. And I've learned that. And I've embraced that and I've tried to share that with my players."

Hurdle doesn't hide. He freely admits that his is not a path you'd want others to take. But he's not ashamed of it, either, not any of it. Without all those struggles, who knows if he'd be here right now, managing one of baseball's great feel-good stories of the year?

"We're prepared for our future through our paths," he says. "I've been given a lot of preparation for different situations."

Hurdle now is a completely different man than the one who guys knew 25 years ago. He's still sure of himself, still has those cowboy looks and that Florida tan, but so much else is different now.

Baseball is a humbling game, and Hurdle has been humbled as much as anyone. That has a way of changing a man. So do two divorces, a fight with alcoholism, and finding out about your daughter's birth defect.

So many managers are former no-frills ballplayers, guys born short on talent who scrapped and busted their way to major-league careers. Hurdle is none of that. He's jaw-dropping talent and movie-star charisma. That's out of the box for a manager. Most of Hurdle's life has been out of the box.

"I remember before my first game," says Rockies ace Jeff Francis, himself a former first-round draft pick. "He called me in his office and told me to just enjoy it. He said, 'Respect everything but be in awe of nothing.' That really rang. You can't be scared, but you have to respect it. He knows what he's talking about."

After the Rockies won the first two games in Arizona in the NLCS, they flew back to Denver on Saturday morning, at the time two games from their first World Series.

You might expect managers to lock themselves in an office, fretting every detail while the baseball world buzzes about a truly historic run.

Hurdle's off-day?

Saturdays at the Hurdle house are "Madi-Daddy Days," and almost always are highlighted by a trip to Starbucks.

But Hurdle didn't get home until 6 a.m., so Madi-Daddy Day stayed at the house.

No big deal, Hurdle's done nothing in his life if not adjust.

Heck, with everything Hurdle's been through, having the Rockies in the World Series doesn't seem all that remarkable.

"Baseball is a game, and I've learned that," he says. "Let's keep it a game.

"Let's not take the end result and wear it like an anchor around our necks."

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