Transcript
WEBVTT
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today on the Athlete One podcast.
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Well, I'll give you a funny one and I'll leave the umpire's name out of it, but I think I always get drawn to this one because, you know, some people would ask me well, as a manager, did you ever get thrown out on purpose?
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Did you ever go out there and try and stir up your team or make a stand or do this?
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And I'll say, you know, yes, there were times when maybe I wanted to spark some energy or light a fuse.
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You know the male testosterone thing or the ego gets involved.
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We weren't playing well.
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We'd had the same crew for four games.
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It was a four-game series, the last of the four days.
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Every game we got thrown a beating.
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We didn't pitch it, we didn't hit it, we couldn't catch it In the fourth game.
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I've had enough, I've seen enough and I walked.
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You're locked in to Athlete One, a podcast for athletes and coaches Coming to you from Dublin, ohio, here to bring you expert advice, insightful conversations and powerful stories from guests who play or coach sports.
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Now veteran high school baseball coach and someone who has jumped out of perfectly good airplanes your host Ken.
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Carpenter.
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Hello and welcome to Athlete One.
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I'm your host, ken Carpenter, excited to have you with us for season two of our show.
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And today's guest is a special one, someone I've been working quite some time to get on the show, and it's Clint Hurdle, former manager of the Colorado Rockies and the Pittsburgh Pirates and had a great major league career as a player.
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Before we get to the episode, I'd like to ask a favor of you, the listener If you could please check out our website.
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It's athlete1.net, that's athlete1.net, that's athlete1.net and click on leave a review.
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If you leave us a review, it helps us to grow the show and I love reading and getting all the feedback that we get from our listeners.
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Also, today's episode of the Athlete One podcast is powered by the netting professionals, improving programs one facility at a time.
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And also, please make sure, when you do reach out to them, tell them the athlete one podcast sent you be sure to follow us on all socials at athlete one podcast, and hit up our website at athlete onenet.
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That's athlete the number onenet.
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This is the athlete one podcast now to my sit down with former major league manager of the colorado rockies and pittsburgh pirates, clint hurdle, and stay till the end to hear the rest of his ejection story.
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Hello and welcome to the Athlete One podcast.
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I'm your host, ken Carpenter, and I'm excited to have me have on today's show not only a great person but also someone who's spent 45 years either playing or managing in the Major League Baseball, and joining me today is Clint Hurdle.
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Mr Hurdle, thank you very much for taking the time to join me on the podcast.
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Ken, you're welcome.
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I'm glad we were able to pull this together.
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I'm not quite technologically savvy as most people, so it took me a while to work through it.
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Thanks for your patience.
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Well, I'm in the same boat, so no need to apologize.
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Well, you retired after managing the Pirates, and what keeps you busy now in retirement?
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Well, I had two years of gainful retirement.
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What I mean by that is the first time in my life I was actually paid to not work.
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That's how bad.
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The Pirates didn't want me back managing that ball club.
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They were willing to pay me to not manage the ball club.
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So I took two years off.
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I had two children my wife and I, carla, have a Madison and Christian.
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They were both still in high school.
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So I thought it'd be a good time for me to make an adjustment, plug back into the family full time which is something that had never happened before and see how it went.
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Well, I decided to try and retire November 15th 2019, and then the rest of the world retired with me on March 15th 2020 when COVID hit.
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So my first biggest task in my retirement was to take on the challenge of homeschooling two teenagers.
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My wife I don't think she's failed at anything in her life other than homeschooling.
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She tried it one year when I was a hitting coach in Texas.
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We were in Arizona she tried to homeschool the kids and it went horribly for everybody.
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And she told me back then if there's ever a homeschooling opportunity again, I'm out, you will have to do it.
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And I'm thinking, well, yeah, sure, I'll do it because that's never going to happen.
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So, yeah, I'll do it because that's never going to happen.
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So, yeah, I'll take down that responsibility.
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Well, lo and behold, it landed in my lap.
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I got to homeschool two teenagers, one in the morning from about 9 until 12, and the other one from 1 to 3.
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And we did that for three or four months until school ran out.
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And then I just found my way to plug back into the family.
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Whether it's going to my daughter's dance recitals, whether it's going to my daughter's dance recitals, whether it was going to play family bingo up at the center where we live on the Island, whether it was to watch my son in his sport of passion crew row the boat.
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Be there for my wife.
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We did some exercise classes together.
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We just spent time together.
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I actually enjoyed it for two years.
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And then, I want to say in 2021, in the winter, bill Schmidt, who was the interim general manager of the Rockies, got the full-time job and he asked me to come back and help in player development.
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I had spent all my career in player development.
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Bill's background was in scouting.
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He was our scouting director for over 20 years with the Rockies.
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He asked me to come back and help in the minor leagues and I said well, that's funny, you should ask that because really that's the only really position or opportunity I'd have any interest in back in baseball now is to work with kids, to work with young managers, young coaches.
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So I moved upon that opportunity.
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They gave me a little fancy title of a special assistant to the general manager and now I am doing special assistant stuff for the general manager.
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I'm in Redding Pennsylvania right now watching our AA team, the Hartford Goats, play.
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I spend a week with each affiliate.
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I do it two weeks a month so I still have two weeks at home and I'm just probably one of the best jobs I ever had.
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It just took me 45 years to get it.
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Yeah, there you go.
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Well, do you miss putting the uniform back on?
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You know there's, I don't, I only put the uniform on.
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It's about for one one, two day period, or actually almost one day a year.
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I manage one of the clubs for the Perfect Game All-American Classic, the showcase operation Perfect Game.
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They run a big showcase, a national showcase that I'm in street clothes for Khakis, a golf shirt and a hat or a visor, but I do put on a uniform to manage one of the teams.
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It's usually the East team.
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I don't miss it where it gnaws at me, where it bites on me.
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Um, I and I felt in my role that once I got outside uh, the aspect of managing or coaching that it was much more unassuming to show up at a facility or stand on a batting cage in khakis and a golf shirt or Hawaiian shirt rather than me in uniform.
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And just sometimes it's not so much that I'm worried, but just some people have a hard time seeing you as the person and they see you as a title.
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Well, he managed, he did this.
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What's he doing here?
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Oh, he's going to.
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He's here to fix all these things.
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I want to come up and just show up and be present, to use my eyes and ears, watch what goes on, be a voice of reason if need be, share some information if asked.
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But the uniform thing I thought it might be good separation for me to get away from that, so it doesn't.
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I've got a bunch of them hanging in the closet back at home, so if I ever need one I can go get one.
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There you go.
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Well, I grew up about a about an hour or so from Pittsburgh in eastern Ohio and, um, I could, I can recall going to because that was close for me.
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I was a I was an Indians fan.
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Now it's the Guardians but but if I wanted to go to a major league game, that was the quickest way to to.
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To go to a game is just drive up to Pittsburgh and catch a game.
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Back in the early 80s I guess you could say so.
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It was always fun just getting up there to see the.
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The park isn't like it is now.
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It was the old stadium, but what a great park they have there in Pittsburgh now.
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It is a beautiful ballpark.
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Pnc Field is magnificent when the sun sets and you get the sun reflection or the sunset reflections off those buildings across the rivers.
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It's so well put together.
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It's very intimate.
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Through the years 2013 through 2015,.
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It was packed up every home game.
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We were filling it up around then for about 2.5 million people.
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I think that's capacity that all it can hold.
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I could probably hold more.
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If you do 81 times 38, you're going to get more than that, but we were packing it.
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It was so much fun.
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It was so much fun for the fans long-suffering fans, fan base there.
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But there's a lot of good baseball in that Rust Belt that you live on.
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Whether it's.
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Cleveland, cincinnati, detroit.
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You know a lot of teams Pittsburgh's playing.
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There's a lot of teams on the Rust Belt.
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I kind of grew up Detroit when I grew up outside of Detroit.
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That's what we called it and I think that's one of the things that added to the lure of baseball.
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The fan base for Pittsburgh is you got people coming from West Virginia, you got people coming from Ohio, you got people coming from Eastern PA, which is much different than Western PA, but it was a fun fan base.
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It was a beautiful ballpark and we gave it everything.
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We had trying to get that six world series title and we weren't able to do that but we got back into some playoff baseball.
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So we we were able to rebond the city with the baseball team.
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And that, so we were able to rebond the city with the baseball team and that was one of my goals coming in.
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Well, I wanted to.
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You know, since a lot of my listeners are high school slash college, you know coaches and players and parents of those areas how important is it to be coachable.
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I think it's one of the most important traits we can have as we walk through life.
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And you know, I won't say from six to 66, because six it's hard to coach anybody that they're six, and I don't mean that in a bad way.
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They're six.
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You know they're distracted easily and they're kids, they need to be six.
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My son was probably the perfect example when I was fired by Colorado in 2009, my son started t-ball at the age of four and I can remember just going out watching practice as a four-year-old trying to play t-ball.
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It was like her and cats.
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I would continue to encourage the coaches that.
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I'm not so sure how much of a teacher you need to be right now, but I think a storyteller and a communicator is going to be your best two strengths, because it's to keep the kids engaged Now, as kids get older and they start playing, you know, and maybe a little bit more of a meaningful way, and they get their teenage years Even.
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some kids now are playing competitive baseball, the ages you know, eight to 10, but coachability is critical.
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I think we all should find a place to want to be a lifelong learner.
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I'm at the age of 66 right now and I'm still looking for ways to learn.
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There's different blogs I read.
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There's different podcasts I listen to.
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There's different books I'm reading.
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I continually want to stretch and grow and get outside my comfort zone.
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I've learned a lot being outside the game now for the past four years and not wearing a uniform and not being in the vacuum every day and in the limelight, but now with more opportunity, working with kids in amateur ball and actually working with our young players here.
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Coachability is critical and I think one of the best tools I've learned along the way for young players is if I think I'm going to coach somebody and whether it's a small group that I'm talking with or it's a one-on-one opportunity I have with a young player, I let them know right up front.
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Okay, we're going to have a little conversation.
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The conversations can't be long because the younger the kids is, the time span, the attention span is short.
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But I would say, when I'm done sharing what I think is important for you today, I want you to give me one or two things you heard me say Because, ken, unfortunately so many times in my career I've thought, I thought I've, I've shared this brilliant message, this critical technique, a certain mechanic that I've kind of helped put together and we're going to deploy today with our hitters or our pitchers, and these kids are nodding their head, shaking their head, yeah, yeah yeah, they're going.
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I can't wait for this old man to shut up.
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That's what they're saying themselves.
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And then when they get done, they hear what I said.
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And then three days later I have three visits.
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So one of the tools that I use with young people is that when I share, I try and keep it short.
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I try and be clear, clean, accurate with my delivery, get it in, get it out.
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I have a friend who calls it be brief and be bright and then ask them back what they heard, because they calls it be brief and be bright and then ask them back what they heard because they might not have heard the six points that I had.
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They might have heard two of them, which is a win if they heard one of them.
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It's a win to expect them to remember all six.
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I actually try and work in threes, no more than three things that I try and teach any child, any youngster, any older player.
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And then I ask what do you hear me say?
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If they got nothing, okay, we're going to revisit it.
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Once they have to do that again, they're going to listen much better the next time because they know the old man ain't going to let them go until I give him something back.
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So the importance of coachability critical.
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If you were a high school player today with the talent you had, what would you tell yourself to get the most out of your ability?
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It would be trust the reps.
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Work as hard as you can in practice so you can actually play in the game.
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Most of us have done it backwards.
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Practice is easier than the game and I learned this from Steve Kerr, the head coach with the Warriors.
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Now he talked about one of the most challenging parts of his career was their team wasn't playing well and Phil Jackson came up with a new scheme.
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He was going to scrimmage.
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They were going to scrimmage, you know, four days a week, which in the NBA you do scrimmage, but it's short incremental bursts and you stop Football.
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You know you have pad day Hockey, they have skate-arounds.
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Baseball was the one sport that was the last one to the table about trying to regauge game speed in practice opportunities.
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You know it was old coaches.
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Throw BP 50 miles an hour.
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Try and throw it at the sweet spot.
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You hit them nice little fungos where all their good hops.
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Nothing's done at game speed in practice for baseball in many years.
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When I played so a speaker said Phil Jackson told me that this week I was going to cover Michael Jordan.
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He said I wanted to throw up in my mouth.
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I don't think he said that, but I knew he had to feel it.
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And he said, after going through that process for a while, come game time, no matter who I got to play against or had to cover, it was easier.
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The games became easy because practice was so hard.
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So the one thing I would tell myself at young club hurdle would be kid, find a way to make practice harder.
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So the and trust the reps once you get in the game, because so many times these kids do work hard at practice, but when they get in the game it's a different mindset.
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The game becomes way too important more than the practice, and they lose focus of what they were doing throughout the week.
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They were creating an opportunity to be successful in the game.
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So trust your reps and make practice harder.
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I had players toward the, I want to say back in 2016,.
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We were putting together a program to hand out for the parents and the people that came to the game and just a simple assignment was I had the players fill out and ask in the questions and one of the questions was what's your favorite MLB team?
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And I was astonished that I had three players on my high school team.
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They were like I don't watch high school, I don't watch Major League Baseball, I don't have a favorite team, and you know.
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I know it's important that you have to get out and play the game, but I think there's a lot can be taken away from just sitting down and watching how the best in the world do it.
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And you know what are your thoughts on that?
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Well, no, I don't disagree, but I got to remind myself, ken, these kids aren't me and the generation of kids.
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Every generation has complained about the generation that's coming up behind them.
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It's just what we do, and I can't expect kids to have the same interest that I did.
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I mean, I collected baseball cards.
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Ask how many of your players collect baseball cards.
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Nowadays, old men and old grown people collect baseball cards more than kids.
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Now it's become a collectible hobby.
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There's money tied to it.
00:19:14.986 --> 00:19:21.990
But in the bad cards, the cards like if I got a card of me right now, my card would be on my spokes on my bicycle.
00:19:21.990 --> 00:19:28.508
I'd take that clothespin and put the baseball card on there to make my bike sound like it had a motor.
00:19:28.508 --> 00:19:31.548
I understand what you're saying with watching games.
00:19:31.548 --> 00:19:39.371
I think it's good opportunities for them to watch other people play the game and they may find something they're attracted to, a style of play, an energy of play.
00:19:39.371 --> 00:19:41.949
They'll also see things that they're not attracted to.
00:19:41.949 --> 00:19:45.367
Well, that kid's got no energy or that team's got no energy.
00:19:45.367 --> 00:19:47.605
That team doesn't hustle, that team doesn't run balls out.
00:19:47.605 --> 00:19:54.222
So I do believe there's an important factor of it.
00:19:54.222 --> 00:19:55.005
I wouldn't say it's a deal breaker.
00:19:55.005 --> 00:19:57.571
If they don't have a favorite team, maybe they have a favorite team in another sport.
00:19:57.571 --> 00:20:03.442
I don't know if you ask them baseball specifically, but maybe they have a favorite team, but it's a different sport.
00:20:03.442 --> 00:20:04.746
Maybe that's an avenue to go.
00:20:04.746 --> 00:20:07.211
I mean, I grew up a Detroit Tiger fan.
00:20:07.211 --> 00:20:09.003
I was a fan of every Detroit team.
00:20:09.003 --> 00:20:10.347
I still am to this day.
00:20:10.347 --> 00:20:11.832
Al Kaline was my guy.
00:20:14.119 --> 00:20:18.171
The kids today they have so many distractions and it's not their fault.
00:20:18.171 --> 00:20:19.261
They have those distractions.
00:20:19.261 --> 00:20:34.240
I think what we can help along the way with is eliminating some distractions for them and truly just trying to help them find if you're playing baseball, why do you play them.
00:20:34.240 --> 00:20:35.484
Find if you're playing baseball, why do you play?
00:20:35.484 --> 00:20:36.107
Do you love the game?
00:20:36.107 --> 00:20:38.015
Um, is it something to keep you, your parents want you to do, to get you out of the house?
00:20:38.015 --> 00:20:39.760
I mean, what's the why behind your playing?
00:20:39.760 --> 00:20:42.368
And then try and work with them on their why so you love the game?
00:20:42.368 --> 00:20:44.242
Have you thought about practicing a little more?
00:20:44.242 --> 00:20:47.410
Did you ever think about playing summer ball or a travel ball?
00:20:47.410 --> 00:20:50.184
Or do you ever watch a game on tv, then go there?
00:20:50.184 --> 00:20:52.270
Or how about the junior college down the street?
00:20:52.270 --> 00:20:53.323
Have you ever watched them play?
00:20:53.323 --> 00:21:00.853
Just different questions, different ways to try and plug them into something that they may have a love for.
00:21:03.340 --> 00:21:17.127
Yeah, definitely I you know, as, as a manager, what was your way of connecting with with the younger players that were either with the Pirates or the Rockies, or even in your experience with minor leagues.
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