Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Batflips and Nerds, the Baseball Podcast
Speaker 1: with a British twist. I am your host, Ben Carter,
Speaker 1: for a very special episode, not least because I have
Speaker 1: the main man, Russell Easom here with me.
Speaker 2: How are you, Russell?
Speaker 3: I'm doing good, Ben, I'm doing good. Yeah. I'm looking
Speaker 3: forward to this, but I think you might be a
Speaker 3: little bit more.
Speaker 1: I am very much looking forward to this because we've
Speaker 1: got no one else but the man himself, Clint hurd Or,
Speaker 1: joining us to chat a little bit at baseball. It's
Speaker 1: a privilege, as you say, as a Rockies fan. Clint
Speaker 1: is someone who I've looked up to you for a
Speaker 1: long time, so it's great to get a chance to
Speaker 1: have a conversation. For those that don't know, Cliff has
Speaker 1: having an extraordinary career in baseball and life in baseball.
Speaker 1: Really played for four different franchises across a ten year
Speaker 1: career and obviously managed two French to over twenty five
Speaker 1: hundred games as a manager at that and we were
Speaker 1: just discussing before we started recording that he is back
Speaker 1: at spring training in Scotts, Arizona, where the Colorado Rockies again.
Speaker 1: Do you know what year in baseball. This is for
Speaker 1: you now, Clint, how many it's been.
Speaker 4: It's a big number, Ben, it's number fifty five.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: Zero.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's extraordinary.
Speaker 1: Well, congratulations, that's an impressive effort.
Speaker 2: But thanks so much for joining us. How are you?
Speaker 4: Thank you for coming on healthy and happy, probably better
Speaker 4: than I deserve. And I do appreciate you all adjusting
Speaker 4: the time with me and for me today.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, No problem, no problem, it's great
Speaker 2: to chat.
Speaker 1: I think we'll get into all parts of your career
Speaker 1: and other things as part of this conversation, but I
Speaker 1: thought we might start with one of your more recent projects,
Speaker 1: which is your new book. I know it's only been
Speaker 1: released very recently, and I know that that was a
Speaker 1: labor of love and passion. I think I heard on
Speaker 1: a different podcast you're talking about the trials and tribulations
Speaker 1: you went through to get this thing way you to publishing.
Speaker 1: I'd be interested to hear what the process of writing
Speaker 1: that was, like. I know you write every way yourself.
Speaker 1: What was it like to go back for your your
Speaker 1: life and career in baseball and put together some thoughts
Speaker 1: and huddlisms as you call them.
Speaker 4: It was you know, what. It was therapeutic in some ways.
Speaker 4: It was enlightening in some ways to you know, re
Speaker 4: visit uh some good times, some hard times, some sad times,
Speaker 4: some fantastic times, and then make sure that I had
Speaker 4: I had the facts right by calling people up and
Speaker 4: revisiting some of the sequence of events. Fact check does work.
Speaker 4: Spell check does work. But you need to talk to
Speaker 4: people when you're talking about people, especially when you're talking
Speaker 4: about relationships with people. And I think we managed everything
Speaker 4: up very very well. And it basically was the book
Speaker 4: that became a labor of love. It's just trying to
Speaker 4: share experience, strength and hope. It's not that I've known
Speaker 4: it all. Matter of fact, I didn't know a whole lot.
Speaker 4: I've learned a lot in the hard way. But I
Speaker 4: thought it was a good times on a challenge from
Speaker 4: a good friend of mine, John Gordon, who was a
Speaker 4: very very well known inspirational writer and speaker has seventeen
Speaker 4: best selling books. He basically just challenged me to write
Speaker 4: my own book. I was looking for an easier, softer way.
Speaker 4: I wanted a co author to write the book with me,
Speaker 4: somebody who had written books, who would do all the
Speaker 4: hard work and I just spit out brilliance from time
Speaker 4: to time and share these stories, let him document everything.
Speaker 4: But it just didn't work out that way, and John
Speaker 4: told me Clinton, you need to share your own story
Speaker 4: with your own words, because I think it has value
Speaker 4: and I think it will help. So I took upon
Speaker 4: the task and it probably took me a little over
Speaker 4: nine months from the time I typed the first word
Speaker 4: to the time I type the last, and then a
Speaker 4: couple more months of you know, putting an index, putting acknowledgments,
Speaker 4: in coordinating some endorsements and things. So almost a year
Speaker 4: and it's out now. It seems to have some good traction.
Speaker 4: I've gotten a lot, a lot of lots of reviews.
Speaker 4: I think anytime a book can make you laugh and cry,
Speaker 4: you know to do both, and that's an enjoyable read.
Speaker 4: So so far, still good.
Speaker 2: I'm glad to hear that.
Speaker 1: I did have a check before we started recording, and
Speaker 1: the book is available on Amazon here in the UK,
Speaker 1: so fans who are on this side of the pond
Speaker 1: are able to get hold of it and check that out.
Speaker 1: I would recommend doing so. There are some amazing stories
Speaker 1: from Well Today as well. You mentioned during Spring training
Speaker 1: with the Colorado Rockies. I'm fascinating what does your role
Speaker 1: look like nowadays? How involved are you with the team.
Speaker 1: What does spring training number fifty look like for.
Speaker 2: You at the moment?
Speaker 4: My job title is a special assistant to the general manager,
Speaker 4: and as I went through baseball, I ran into a
Speaker 4: bunch of different special assistants to the general manager. It
Speaker 4: seemed to be a role that was somewhat defined. You
Speaker 4: could bounce around a lot of different ways. You could
Speaker 4: work in the minor leagues, you could work in the
Speaker 4: big leagues. You could do some scouting, you could work
Speaker 4: some player development, and you basically did things that maybe
Speaker 4: the general manager didn't want to do, or to help him,
Speaker 4: provide him with a different lens at the sea things.
Speaker 4: So I was actually retired for two years. After I
Speaker 4: was fired by the Rockies in nineteen I had a
Speaker 4: little downtime and I thought things through and realized that
Speaker 4: I was going to get paid for two years to
Speaker 4: not work, which had never happened to me before in
Speaker 4: my life. And I thought I'd move upon it with
Speaker 4: two young children at home, still in high school. So
Speaker 4: the Bill of November I stopped. I stopped working the
Speaker 4: middle of March, the world stopped working. COVID hit and
Speaker 4: everything was shut down. So I was able to homeschool
Speaker 4: a couple of kids, spend a couple of years at home,
Speaker 4: and then the Rockies called and asked me to basically
Speaker 4: spend time in our player development system. It's what I've
Speaker 4: done a lot of I'm helping grow kids, grow the
Speaker 4: young players up, helping them grow the young managers and
Speaker 4: coaches up, and report to our our general manager and
Speaker 4: the people at the major league level on you know,
Speaker 4: who's looking good, who's showing improvement, Maybe who do we
Speaker 4: need to talk about in a little different venue. It's
Speaker 4: been very rewarding. Our farm system has become one of
Speaker 4: our strongest assets, even though our major league record has
Speaker 4: been really rough the last two seasons. We have developed
Speaker 4: a lot of young talent. We've got more young pitchers coming,
Speaker 4: more young players coming. We saw some of them last year,
Speaker 4: two Gold Glovers to bar and Doyle. We saw some
Speaker 4: big arms in the bullpen show up. We got more
Speaker 4: guys coming. So that's been my role. I work about
Speaker 4: two weeks a month, which is really really cool, up
Speaker 4: and down the minor league system, up and down the
Speaker 4: Mynor League system, a trip to the Dominican I do
Speaker 4: some instruction league work, so all baseball related. My finger's
Speaker 4: still on the pultse of all things Rockies. But I
Speaker 4: also still have time to get home and spend with
Speaker 4: my our daughter Maddie and who's still at home, and
Speaker 4: my wife Carlo.
Speaker 2: Well, that sounds deal.
Speaker 1: And you've got me fired up about the Rockies, just
Speaker 1: with your with your small tipbits there on the future
Speaker 1: looking bright that that is what we want to hear,
Speaker 1: I think, and I maybe we can take it all
Speaker 1: the way back to the beginning, really off your professional
Speaker 1: career at least, and maybe even just before that. I
Speaker 1: saw that that maybe things could have been very different
Speaker 1: on your journey, because I believe you had the offer
Speaker 1: to play college.
Speaker 2: Football and baseball at the University of Miami rather than
Speaker 2: turn pro.
Speaker 1: How strongly did you consider pursuing that path rather than
Speaker 1: than going straight into the pros.
Speaker 4: I probably didn't consider as much as my parents did.
Speaker 4: My dad was not an agent by any means, but
Speaker 4: he was very committed to leveraging the best opportunity for me.
Speaker 4: We didn't know when I'd get drafted, what round, what pick,
Speaker 4: but the football scholarship combined with the baseball scholarship. I
Speaker 4: should say there were two teams that would let me
Speaker 4: play both sports, the University of Virginia University of Miami.
Speaker 4: I had a lot of individual teams offer either football
Speaker 4: or baseball. The most interesting concept or opportunity I had
Speaker 4: was I had an academic scholarship offer to Harvard University.
Speaker 4: My mother, my mother, from a very early age, trussed
Speaker 4: the importance of grades, end of learning, and of reading,
Speaker 4: and to this day, I'm still an avid reader. I
Speaker 4: still want to learn. Part one of the chapters in
Speaker 4: the book Hurdleisms is about a white belt mentality being
Speaker 4: a lifelong learner. But my dad wanted to make sure
Speaker 4: we had options and try to leverage those options and
Speaker 4: the best of his ability, so to play college football
Speaker 4: and baseball. It was probably real until a point, it
Speaker 4: wasn't real to me because since the time I was five,
Speaker 4: I wanted to be a big league ball player. I
Speaker 4: wanted to be won a World Series. I wanted to
Speaker 4: you know, I wanted to do that. And when the
Speaker 4: offer came, and the offer was significant enough, there was
Speaker 4: a no brainer. We were going to go to baseball.
Speaker 3: And so like how different was that world claimed?
Speaker 5: Because I obviously Ben and I have we've been following
Speaker 5: baseball for fifteen ty years. The what was the draft
Speaker 5: like back in that day, back when you went in,
Speaker 5: you went in the first round? Was there was there anything?
Speaker 5: How long did it take you to actually know that
Speaker 5: it's happened. It's not being released on social media in
Speaker 5: an instant, is it?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: It wasn't you know what it's It's almost like I
Speaker 4: feel like it was in black and white. It wasn't
Speaker 4: even in color. It was so long ago. Scouts would
Speaker 4: see you play, you would fill out a note card
Speaker 4: for them. They would hold the note card. Every once
Speaker 4: in a while you would get a phone call on
Speaker 4: a rotary phone from a scout. He'd pick your brain.
Speaker 4: Some of them would actually show up at your house
Speaker 4: and ask a few questions. But the day of the draft,
Speaker 4: I was told by there was three clubs that let
Speaker 4: me know that there's a good chance that I would
Speaker 4: go in the first round, and if I did, there'd
Speaker 4: be a follow up phone call. Well. One of the
Speaker 4: teams was the Oakland Athletics. They were picking last. This
Speaker 4: was in the seventies with the Oakland Athletics were one
Speaker 4: of the best teams in baseball. Charlie Finley is still
Speaker 4: on the team. At that time, he was kind of
Speaker 4: an nonsense owners so that the scout told me, hey, look,
Speaker 4: we drafting the first round. Here's my number. You call
Speaker 4: me and the offer's twenty five thousand dollars. That's it.
Speaker 4: That's all we got. So it was kind of a
Speaker 4: booboo lip.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: It was kind of sad because you work your whole life,
Speaker 4: you think maybe I'm gonna do in the first round.
Speaker 4: A guy calls you, yep today, you know, if we drafted,
Speaker 4: here's this is all you're going to get, and you
Speaker 4: got to call us to let us another you're taking
Speaker 4: it or not. So fortunately I wasn't drafted by them.
Speaker 4: I was drafted by the Royals, the ninth picking the nation,
Speaker 4: and after some negotiations by my dad, you know, we
Speaker 4: found a common ground. We both believed it was a
Speaker 4: fair deal. But it was a rotary phone call. And
Speaker 4: then it was the scout coming over to my house
Speaker 4: a day later, and I was sitting down having pizza,
Speaker 4: you know, with my sisters, my mom and dad, just
Speaker 4: you know, six or seven people. It was nothing like
Speaker 4: the you know, extravaganza that it's turned in today, it's
Speaker 4: truly you know, it's a celebration, it's an event. We
Speaker 4: do it over the All Star break. Now it's it's
Speaker 4: a it's a big profile deal. But back in the day, guys,
Speaker 4: it was not that big of a deal. What for
Speaker 4: us it was because it was still the culmination about,
Speaker 4: you know, a dream since you had in the backyard
Speaker 4: since you were five.
Speaker 5: No, I was just going to say that, like from
Speaker 5: from some bios that I've read, that like the Kansas
Speaker 5: City Scout with Bill Fishtt, with somebody that you were
Speaker 5: quite friends when the family was friends with anyway, because
Speaker 5: you'd known him for a while, so I guess it
Speaker 5: felt was he the one you did know the best
Speaker 5: as well?
Speaker 3: And did that play like anything into that conversation.
Speaker 4: It didn't hurt by any means. Bill had seen me
Speaker 4: play for three years. He actually came to the first
Speaker 4: game I played at high school. I was a sophomore,
Speaker 4: and that at that time sophomore was tenth grade. We
Speaker 4: had a senior catcher, Waldo Williams was an All American
Speaker 4: football player a high school end up going to Florida State.
Speaker 4: Behind the plate, so all the scouts were going to
Speaker 4: see Waldo. I happened to be a freshman, a sophomore
Speaker 4: on the team, which didn't happen very often in those days,
Speaker 4: and I caught his eye in tenth grade and eventually
Speaker 4: he would have I think what they call impromptu workouts
Speaker 4: or whether they were whether they were legal or not,
Speaker 4: I don't know, but he'd say, Hey, meet me at
Speaker 4: Coco rock Ledge Baseball Park and I'll throw you some VP.
Speaker 4: And what kid wouldn't want to go hit VP? You
Speaker 4: know from a big league scout. So we must have
Speaker 4: done that a dozen times. He knew my mom, knew
Speaker 4: my dad by far and away, the closest person in
Speaker 4: the professional game that we knew. So it was very
Speaker 4: sweet that he was the guy that they drafted us.
Speaker 4: He was the one that was able to come over
Speaker 4: because we all kind of celebrated the success. He put
Speaker 4: the work in. We put the work in, you know,
Speaker 4: we had put it together as a team, and we'd
Speaker 4: see where it going. Funny part was a few years later,
Speaker 4: I was traded to Cincinnati and Bill Fisher was actually
Speaker 4: the pitching coach on the Cincinnati Reds at that time,
Speaker 4: so we got to rekindle our friendship.
Speaker 1: That's amazing, awesomet I know one thing that happened very
Speaker 1: soon after you drafted, was was the.
Speaker 2: Sports Illustrated cover.
Speaker 1: You know, that's one of the things that I'm sure
Speaker 1: comes up in and a lot of the conversations that
Speaker 1: you have and the front cover of that nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: six was it outing this year's phenome on the front
Speaker 1: cover with your photo? There must have been I mean
Speaker 1: at that time that was the equivalent of going viral
Speaker 1: on social media, right. There must have been enormous pressure
Speaker 1: on your shoulders and a weight of expectation that came
Speaker 1: with that. Did you feel at the time, looking back now,
Speaker 1: did it have any effect on you? Or were you
Speaker 1: just you know, excited to play ball and ready to
Speaker 1: show what you could do.
Speaker 4: All of the above? I think I was excited to
Speaker 4: play ball. We had been given a heads up. The
Speaker 4: SI group had been around the spring training and taking
Speaker 4: pictures of various young players that they'll never tell you
Speaker 4: it's going to be on the cover normally until you're
Speaker 4: on the cover, but they let us know that that
Speaker 4: when that addition would come out. And one of the
Speaker 4: funnier things that happened to me was they took my picture.
Speaker 4: They took a picture of Willie Wilson, Rich Gaiale, three
Speaker 4: guys on our team, a bunch of other young players.
Speaker 4: But every morning, on the way to the ballpark, I
Speaker 4: would stop at a seven eleven and I would get
Speaker 4: a quarter milk and a honey bun. It's like a
Speaker 4: big miscuit, a big don't every morning, and normally the
Speaker 4: same kid was working there in the morning, he's about
Speaker 4: my age. Well, this morning I walk in and I
Speaker 4: put the honeybun down, the milk on the counter. I
Speaker 4: look at him. He looks at me. He looks down
Speaker 4: at the counter where there's three magazines. They didn't have
Speaker 4: a magazine rap back then. You know, you go in
Speaker 4: the convenience stores. Now there's fifty magazines. They had three magazines, Newsweek,
Speaker 4: Life and Sports Illustrated. So he looks down. I do
Speaker 4: not even watching what he's looking at it, and he
Speaker 4: looks back at me. He looks down again. So the
Speaker 4: second time he looks down, I look down. I see
Speaker 4: my picture on the cover of the Sports Illustrated. I
Speaker 4: look at him. He looks at me. I freak out.
Speaker 4: I walk out of the store, no milk, no honey bun.
Speaker 4: I get in my car and I just sat there
Speaker 4: for a couple of minutes, thinking, Okay, something's changing. I
Speaker 4: didn't even know what it was, but I knew something
Speaker 4: was going to be different. So I don't think at
Speaker 4: the time I realized how much I was going to
Speaker 4: internalize maybe some pressure, or try and do more than
Speaker 4: I was capable of doing to validate the fact that
Speaker 4: I was on the cover of a national magazine at
Speaker 4: the age of twenty years old. I go to a clubhouse,
Speaker 4: you know, an hour forty five minutes later, and there's
Speaker 4: guys who've been playing ten years the big leagues that
Speaker 4: have never had their picture on the cover of anything,
Speaker 4: and now this young kid walks in as a rookie.
Speaker 4: He's on the cover Sports Illustrated. And you know, there
Speaker 4: wasn't bad blood in the clubhouse. I think guys were
Speaker 4: just kind of like, really like, what's he done? But
Speaker 4: when you get out within the league throughout the rest
Speaker 4: of the season and you're playing other teams and guys
Speaker 4: who've been around and you're this young kid, it got
Speaker 4: a little dicey at times. I tried, probably to do
Speaker 4: more than I was capable of doing again at times
Speaker 4: to validate you know that. I won't say that that
Speaker 4: was the reason, but I didn't. I lead a lot
Speaker 4: of lessons, and I think that's the one thing that
Speaker 4: I'm most proud of is regardless of how I handle
Speaker 4: a good bad or and different lessons learned from it, yes,
Speaker 4: and then to be able to recreate a new narrative
Speaker 4: from it because I really never was a phenom playing.
Speaker 4: I've never been a feno, managing or coaching, but I
Speaker 4: was able to take that career and turn it into
Speaker 4: a coach and a manager and a person now who's
Speaker 4: been fifty years in the game and still hopefully providing
Speaker 4: some impact and some influence and just trying to help
Speaker 4: people on their way.
Speaker 1: He kind of preempted my next question a little bit there.
Speaker 1: I'm interested to know what you said that it did
Speaker 1: have a big impact on kind of rest of your
Speaker 1: career after you feel done playing. But what I guess
Speaker 1: what were the specific lessons or the biggest lessons I
Speaker 1: suppose that you took from having been there, done that,
Speaker 1: played the game at the highest level that you then
Speaker 1: took into your philosophy coaching, whether that be you know,
Speaker 1: helping out young hitters, and more stuff to do with
Speaker 1: technique and the ways to be a successful hitch at
Speaker 1: the major league level.
Speaker 2: But also I guess later.
Speaker 1: In your career as a manager, as a clubhouse leader,
Speaker 1: as someone who had to galvanize a whole locker room,
Speaker 1: you know, having gone through struggles at the major league level,
Speaker 1: having been on the front cover of s I all
Speaker 1: of this other stuff. What were the main things that
Speaker 1: kind of toold you up to be really successful in
Speaker 1: your post playing career.
Speaker 4: Well, I think, you know, Rustin Benz, just to give
Speaker 4: you you probably got the back notes. But there was
Speaker 4: a lot of other challenges throughout my life that I
Speaker 4: that I had to meet, some self created. I was
Speaker 4: divorced twice and I'm not proud of that, but I've
Speaker 4: you know, there's a lot of collatteral damage that comes
Speaker 4: with divorce. There's a lot of emotions, and unfortunately I
Speaker 4: was the common fabric in both of those. By going
Speaker 4: through failed marriages and maybe not producing on the field
Speaker 4: like a lot of people think you should. I tried
Speaker 4: to find ways to numb the pain, and I actually
Speaker 4: drank myself into becoming an alcoholic, and it was a
Speaker 4: life that I was living in disgise a lot of
Speaker 4: times because a lot of people never probably knew the
Speaker 4: pain or the sometimes embarrassment that I wasn't what I
Speaker 4: should have been in the eyes with so many other people.
Speaker 4: And my parents have been married their whole life. My
Speaker 4: dad's ninety one, my mother's eighty nine. They've been married
Speaker 4: going to be sixty years. And I can't even have
Speaker 4: two marriages that add up to like fifteen or ten
Speaker 4: or whatever it was. So you feel that you're trying
Speaker 4: to coach. Then you're done playing. You weren't probably what
Speaker 4: everybody thought you should have been as a player. Now
Speaker 4: what can you be as a coach? No idea about
Speaker 4: managing that happened down the road. But there was a
Speaker 4: lot of opportunities for me to learn from mistakes, to
Speaker 4: seek help from others, and then to take responsibility for
Speaker 4: my actions, not make excuses. All these things add up
Speaker 4: the perfect coaching lessons in a lot of ways, because
Speaker 4: as my players got to realize over time, there wasn't
Speaker 4: a whole lot they could bring into me as a
Speaker 4: coach or a manager that I hadn't walk through in
Speaker 4: some degree or some level, whether on the field or
Speaker 4: off the field, and at least more often not. I
Speaker 4: can tell hey, I'm not sure what's going to work
Speaker 4: for you, but I can tell you what won't work
Speaker 4: for you. You know, the couple of things that I did,
Speaker 4: those won't work trust me, and I think that's what
Speaker 4: enabled me. I mean, when you guys think about it,
Speaker 4: I managed two teams for seventeen years. We never won
Speaker 4: a World Series. That's unheard of. So you must be
Speaker 4: doing something right. You must be taking care of the brand.
Speaker 4: You must be growing relationships, the community, the players, all
Speaker 4: of it. There must be something good going on for
Speaker 4: people to keep you in charge of organizations that are
Speaker 4: worth billions of dollars. If you're just a twice divorce
Speaker 4: recovering alcohol, there's gotta be more to you than that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think before we get into talking about the
Speaker 5: specifics of like managing Korea, we have maybe like a
Speaker 5: cheeky question, but is there an easier job than being
Speaker 5: a hitting coach in the pre humane colsfield like the
Speaker 5: bull Goo's fun?
Speaker 3: Like just hit it in the aird lads? Come on? Uh?
Speaker 4: There were times. Actually Larry Walker told me when I
Speaker 4: first took the job, he goes, hey, when we're at home.
Speaker 4: You can take the games off at home. You don't
Speaker 4: have to show up. We need you on the road
Speaker 4: because you know, the rage was the Rockies crushed people
Speaker 4: at home. They don't hit anything on the road. You know,
Speaker 4: they could take batting practice in the lobby at the
Speaker 4: hotel on the road, but you put them at Corus
Speaker 4: Field and there's burn fifteen runs a night, whether you
Speaker 4: like it or not. The easiest job in baseball at times,
Speaker 4: absolutely Russ was being the hitting coach for the Blake
Speaker 4: Street Bombers. And if you look back at those five
Speaker 4: guys the back of their baseball cards, the numbers. I
Speaker 4: can remember looking at Gala Raga at nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 4: his numbers at the All Star Break were better than
Speaker 4: my career numbers in ten years. I mean what he
Speaker 4: had done at the half. And then you got Burke's,
Speaker 4: you got Walker, you got Castillo, you got you got Bschett.
Speaker 4: I mean in Galla Raga, it was crazy. And to
Speaker 4: work with those guys, yeah, it wasn't hard. There was
Speaker 4: harder on the road. But what are the other blessings
Speaker 4: I had? Later after managing in Colorado, I got fired.
Speaker 4: I went to Texas and to be the hitting coach
Speaker 4: that year for the Texas Rangers in twenty ten when
Speaker 4: we went to the World Series as well. Josh Hamilton,
Speaker 4: Nellie Cruz, Michael Young, Elvis andres Ian Kinsler, you know,
Speaker 4: Mitch Moore, Josh Hamilton, it's another it's you know what,
Speaker 4: that's a pretty good job. Those are good jobs to.
Speaker 2: Have, great jobs to have.
Speaker 1: And I'm interested that you brought him up, So I
Speaker 1: was going to maybe ask you about Josh Hamilton. Here
Speaker 1: is someone else who obviously has had publicized issues off
Speaker 1: the field with alcohol and other things as well, and
Speaker 1: I imagine there's probably no coincidence that that, yeah, you
Speaker 1: mentioned twenty ten when you worked with him, was the
Speaker 1: best year of his career.
Speaker 2: He had an unbelievable season. What was that relationship like
Speaker 2: between you and him?
Speaker 1: Did you feel like you were able to connect with
Speaker 1: him in a way just because of the history that
Speaker 1: you'd had with some of those off field struggles, some
Speaker 1: of those mental struggles, you know, and that kind of
Speaker 1: maybe helped him click a little bit more on the
Speaker 1: field and compartmentalized in a way.
Speaker 4: I think that's true. I think there's a lot of
Speaker 4: truth to that. I think the other thing was was
Speaker 4: very It wasn't a coincidence. Ron Washington, who was the
Speaker 4: manager of the Rangers at the time, was my third
Speaker 4: base coach when I managed in the Mets system the
Speaker 4: last two years in Triple A. Ron and I had history.
Speaker 4: Ron knew of my history, I knew of his history.
Speaker 4: John Daniels was an intern for the Rockies in the
Speaker 4: early two thousands working in the video room. John and
Speaker 4: I developed a relationship. So when I go there to interview,
Speaker 4: it was about baseball. It was about hitting. It was
Speaker 4: about being an offensive coordinator more than you know, a
Speaker 4: hitting coach, because they had talented offensive people they had
Speaker 4: really never gotten over the hub. How do you help
Speaker 4: Wash put the lineup together so we can win a
Speaker 4: three to two game, We can win a six, six
Speaker 4: to five game, or we can win a fourteen to
Speaker 4: twelve game. Different ways to beat people. But when Josh
Speaker 4: Hamilton's name came up as we were identifying players, John
Speaker 4: said truthfully, he said, I really believe that you were
Speaker 4: meant to have this job to help Josh. He goes,
Speaker 4: I've known because he got to know Josh he goes.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of symmetry and what he's experienced, and
Speaker 4: I know what you've experienced by my conversations with John
Speaker 4: when he was in Colorado. And to this day, you know,
Speaker 4: Josh and I still stay in contact. It was one
Speaker 4: of the most interesting years I've ever had because we
Speaker 4: actually rebuilt his stance and his swing in the middle
Speaker 4: of a season, which I've never done with anybody before.
Speaker 4: We had gone through a process of events. But to
Speaker 4: watch the numbers that kid put up that year to
Speaker 4: win the MVP for us to go to the World Series.
Speaker 4: And if you look at the numbers he put up
Speaker 4: from June first to the end of the secenaon and
Speaker 4: they're like those Nintendo numbers the game you play on
Speaker 4: a computer. But to see the joy that it brought,
Speaker 4: not just to him, but the joy that it brought
Speaker 4: to the team, To see the best version of Josh
Speaker 4: on the field and in the clubhouse. You know, that's
Speaker 4: what life's about. When you can experience things together. You're
Speaker 4: going to experience hard times, you're gonna experience good times,
Speaker 4: but to be in it together, to be connected together,
Speaker 4: that was some of the That was one of the
Speaker 4: years I'll always remember, very very very very fun.
Speaker 5: So yeah, so let's go through that. That kind of
Speaker 5: like that start of that managing your career. Then when
Speaker 5: you you took over the rookies in two thousand and two,
Speaker 5: kind of I think reading that you kind of said
Speaker 5: when you had an instantaneous bounce back, it was something
Speaker 5: that you were kind of just anticipating that was going
Speaker 5: to happen anyway we see it. I think quite a
Speaker 5: lot in a lot of sports when the new manager
Speaker 5: comes in, the regression to the mean happens, and the
Speaker 5: guys performed probably the way that they should, and everybody's
Speaker 5: just like, oh, do manage manages a genius, But like you,
Speaker 5: you were quite experimental. I think in those early days
Speaker 5: of kind of like being being with the rookies, the
Speaker 5: attempts at like a full man rotation, like when you
Speaker 5: get into like the two thousand and seven season, And
Speaker 5: I think i'll let Ben talk about Rocktoba specifically. How
Speaker 5: did you find those first few years being kind of
Speaker 5: like fully in charge of the team.
Speaker 4: Well, it was it was a very surreal because when
Speaker 4: I Dan o'dodd called me up one morning said I'm
Speaker 4: coming over your house. I got to talk to you,
Speaker 4: I thought he was coming over the fire we weren't
Speaker 4: in a good spot. Buddy Bell was in a third
Speaker 4: year of managing. Buddy Bell's a tremendous baseball man. I
Speaker 4: learned a lot from him, and we weren't performing well.
Speaker 4: And you know, it's usually the coaches that you know,
Speaker 4: may go first, a couple of coaches or the manager.
Speaker 4: You know, you can't get rid of twenty five players.
Speaker 4: But we were at a point and Dan had made
Speaker 4: some comments that just my imagination would run with them. Okay,
Speaker 4: we didn't start hitting or I'm out, but I can
Speaker 4: remember Dan saying, look, are you going to be home? Yes,
Speaker 4: I am. I'm coming to your house. Well, I've never
Speaker 4: had a general manager ever tell me he's coming. So
Speaker 4: I call up my dad and I said, Dad, this
Speaker 4: is crazy. The GM's coming to my house. He goes, well,
Speaker 4: what for? I go, he's coming to fire me? And
Speaker 4: he goes, well, I know you've been saying it's been hard.
Speaker 4: You know, you were kind of talking about if it
Speaker 4: doesn't get better, there's no telling what could happen. He
Speaker 4: so you think he's gonna fire? Why else would he
Speaker 4: be coming to my house. I said, he's gonna save me, though.
Speaker 4: The Walk of shame, which I've had as a player
Speaker 4: a couple of times. Is you know, when you're told
Speaker 4: you're not good enough now and you got to go
Speaker 4: back to your locker, pack a bag and then walk
Speaker 4: out of the clubhouse with your bag in your hand.
Speaker 4: You know, that's quite humble, but it happens and it's
Speaker 4: real and it's a great learning lesson. So I said, well,
Speaker 4: I don't have to do that. He'll get rid of
Speaker 4: me at home. I'll go get my bag later when
Speaker 4: nobody's there. You know, it'll all work out. Well. He
Speaker 4: walks me through the process and then at the end
Speaker 4: he's kind of going, hey, yeah, and I just let
Speaker 4: Buddy Bell go this morning. I I'm just wondering what's
Speaker 4: coming next because and my my reason of being here
Speaker 4: is I'm asking you to be the or a manager
Speaker 4: and start running the club starting tonight. Wow. And I
Speaker 4: was like, excuse me quite and he goes, no, I
Speaker 4: want you to start running the club. Then I want
Speaker 4: you to be the inner manager. And he goes, why
Speaker 4: does that surprise you? I go, in all transparency, yes,
Speaker 4: I thought you were coming apart, and he you know,
Speaker 4: we laughed, but it just goes to show you facts
Speaker 4: aren't feelings right, and your feelings sometimes can take you
Speaker 4: a direction you really don't need to go. So to
Speaker 4: go to your point, Russ, one of the things I
Speaker 4: wanted to make sure I did with the club coming in.
Speaker 4: We were gonna experiment. This wasn't rocket science. We weren't
Speaker 4: here in cancer. We're playing baseball and we're not playing
Speaker 4: good baseball. What do we need to do? Just like
Speaker 4: good solid baseball and see where that takes us? So
Speaker 4: we were going to get creative. And it was you know,
Speaker 4: if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, We'll try something else.
Speaker 4: But it was just having the ability to not think
Speaker 4: everything is life or death, and everything is either wrong
Speaker 4: or right, and everything is either good or bad. You know.
Speaker 4: Sometimes you know, you get experiment and some as you
Speaker 4: work your way into things, and it shows trust, and
Speaker 4: it shows cohesion, and it shows a need to depend
Speaker 4: upon somebody else. So I thought those were important things
Speaker 4: to bring to the table based on what I learned.
Speaker 4: And you know, eventually I think that the players they
Speaker 4: bought into it. Some degreaders, no doubt, But like you said,
Speaker 4: I mean, I've also been the manager that got fired
Speaker 4: in OH nine and Jim Tracy ended up taking the
Speaker 4: team of the playoffs. So I've been on both both
Speaker 4: ends of that spectrum. Because nobody shows up as a
Speaker 4: Major league manager GM and says, you know what, let
Speaker 4: me see what I can do to screw things up today.
Speaker 4: Let me see what I can do to just catapult
Speaker 4: our team into last place and go on a losing sting.
Speaker 4: Nobody does that, even though that's what happens sometimes.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of questions on the Rockies, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to try and keep them succinct. But I
Speaker 1: think we should definitely talk about two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: The Rockies went into that year kind of looking for
Speaker 1: fist inspiration to get back to the playoffs, and for
Speaker 1: a while it was questionable whether they would get there,
Speaker 1: of course, and then in September and October, I don't
Speaker 1: know how else to describe it than you know, all
Speaker 1: hell broke loose in a way, the run to almost
Speaker 1: steal the division and get into the playoffs, and then
Speaker 1: the extraordinary October run. I think the team went twenty
Speaker 1: one and one after September the fifteenth up until the
Speaker 1: World Series, of course, which is just an extraordinary run.
Speaker 1: At that time of the season, I'm fascinated in at
Speaker 1: that moment in time in particular, what was the atmosphere like,
Speaker 1: And I mean both at course field during games, but
Speaker 1: also just in the locker room. Did you go out
Speaker 1: there at some points in that street just feeling like
Speaker 1: we're just not going to lose today because we didn't
Speaker 1: lose yesterday or the day before, and something is just clicking.
Speaker 2: What was it like to be part of a streak
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 4: Well, I think it was a slow burn in a
Speaker 4: good way because all year long we never got hot.
Speaker 4: We were three games under, three games over. We were
Speaker 4: never in it, but we were never out of it.
Speaker 4: And I just kept sharing with the men, guys, we
Speaker 4: haven't got hot yet. You know, we've grown together in
Speaker 4: We had a bunch of young players kind of bond
Speaker 4: together that had won in the minor leagues together, so
Speaker 4: they were probably a closer group than any other group
Speaker 4: we had. In two, three, four, or five, six, they
Speaker 4: were coming together, both pitching, defense, hitting, all of it.
Speaker 4: You'd see signs of it, but you didn't see the
Speaker 4: depth that some of the better clubs had. And then
Speaker 4: seven they started playing just with a little more swagger.
Speaker 4: And one of the reasons why I really believe was
Speaker 4: Tulowitzki brought an edge to our team that we didn't
Speaker 4: have before. That if you had a little edge, Tulowitzki
Speaker 4: helped you have more of an edge. If you had
Speaker 4: an edge, you had a bigger edge. If you didn't
Speaker 4: have an edge, you found an edge or he was
Speaker 4: going to help you find it. It was one of
Speaker 4: the few times I saw a rookie come up and
Speaker 4: impact a clubhouse. And it wasn't just cocky. It was
Speaker 4: a swagger. One of the times I can remember him talking,
Speaker 4: It was guys, I've never lost like this before, and
Speaker 4: I'm not about I'm not about to start doing it now.
Speaker 4: You know, we need to figure some things out. This
Speaker 4: was a rookie talking to a room full of guys
Speaker 4: that already had major league time, but he led by
Speaker 4: example as well. It wasn't just talk. So there was
Speaker 4: a belief that was probably never there before that we
Speaker 4: can we can, we can play, and we can play
Speaker 4: better than we've played. Well, you go in the middle
Speaker 4: of September and I think it's still at the time
Speaker 4: where how many games to play? We were half a
Speaker 4: dozen games out and then like you said, we win,
Speaker 4: we win, We went, we went a different way, we
Speaker 4: went another different way. It's another person, it's the other person.
Speaker 4: It's a pitcher, it's a hitter. And about a week
Speaker 4: into it, guys were showing up earlier, guys were staying later.
Speaker 4: The crowd people were, you know people. The park was
Speaker 4: half full at VP, which the park had never been
Speaker 4: half full at BP. And the streets are getting crowded
Speaker 4: like they've never been crowded before. I mean they've been crowded.
Speaker 4: But it was like Opening Day every day for about
Speaker 4: three weeks as we went through that stretch, and the
Speaker 4: enthusiasm in the ball aallpark was contagious, but the enthusiasm
Speaker 4: in the dugout, guys pulling for one another, different men.
Speaker 4: We had a lockdown bullpen. We had good enough starting
Speaker 4: pitching that we could use the bullpen when we wanted to,
Speaker 4: not when we had to. We fed off that the
Speaker 4: position players knew there was games we could win two
Speaker 4: to one, but we could win ten to nine. And
Speaker 4: when you got players like Hop and Holiday on the
Speaker 4: corners in the outfield, you got a guy that can
Speaker 4: go get the ball to Varis and Sell, you got
Speaker 4: a go go guy at second and Matt Suey, you
Speaker 4: got a young stud at short, you got Garrett Atkins
Speaker 4: and Todd Helton on the corners that both drove in
Speaker 4: one hundred runs, and you got this catcher back there
Speaker 4: that ended up catching every one of those games. You
Speaker 4: are vit Toriabla. It was a closed, tight knit group
Speaker 4: of men that truly wanted to have the others to
Speaker 4: be successful. One of the beautiful parts of all that
Speaker 4: was when when Tavaris went down Ryan Spielberg's and Corey
Speaker 4: Sullivan platoon in center field and did a fantastic job.
Speaker 4: So it brought some more people into the package as well.
Speaker 4: But truthfully, that twenty five men in the club out
Speaker 4: of the in September, you can extend the can extend the roster.
Speaker 4: We had a we had a roster full of man.
Speaker 4: I think the team that went to the World Series
Speaker 4: had twenty one homegrown players drafted by the Rockies through
Speaker 4: our violin system, which is unheard of in today's game.
Speaker 4: But it was one of the most remarkable times that
Speaker 4: I've ever been in uniform to watch because what you
Speaker 4: felt like, guys, was like you watch your kids play
Speaker 4: in the backyard, and you know, they just keep doing
Speaker 4: things that you just keep going, Oh my god, you
Speaker 4: just keep clapping, just keep clapping, high five and and
Speaker 4: trying to stay out of the way.
Speaker 1: Man, I've got goosebumps listening to you talk about it.
Speaker 1: I can only imagine what it was like to experience
Speaker 1: it all. I've got one last Rockies question, and I'll
Speaker 1: hand over to us to stare us away from that
Speaker 1: a little bit. I think it's it's a bit of
Speaker 1: a two parts to build I think has puzzled people
Speaker 1: for so long, right in terms of how do you
Speaker 1: create a pitching staff that can be successful there? How
Speaker 1: do you help your hitters be successful at home and
Speaker 1: on the road. I think there's so many unique issues
Speaker 1: it poses to to the Rockies being their bullpark, being
Speaker 1: at altitude. But it seems like from the outside anyway,
Speaker 1: and I'm happy for you to correct me that they've
Speaker 1: never quite managed to crack the code, if there even
Speaker 1: is one, Right, I'm fascinated in how you look at
Speaker 1: it now in terms of what the way is to
Speaker 1: approach it or how you.
Speaker 2: Have to do things differently, just knowing that.
Speaker 1: That is such a unique factor that other teams don't
Speaker 1: have to and off the back of that I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, give me some cause for optimism about this
Speaker 1: team going into not just twenty twenty five, but I
Speaker 1: guess seasons to come, and maybe the direction of the
Speaker 1: franchise and the way it's going that's that's going to
Speaker 1: have the arrow pointing out.
Speaker 4: Well, I would agree with you on we haven't cracked
Speaker 4: the code. We've had four playoff teams I think ninety five,
Speaker 4: two thousand and seven, well, two thousand and nine and
Speaker 4: then seventeen and eighteen. We've never won the division thirty
Speaker 4: five years.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's a tough division.
Speaker 4: It is a very unique atmosphere because there's nothing else
Speaker 4: like it in the major leagues anywhere. It is different
Speaker 4: challenge at home versus on the road. There's different scientific
Speaker 4: things that will pey. It's different pitching, you know, the
Speaker 4: pitch shaping. Obviously, balls go farther and we tried different things.
Speaker 4: Early on, it was a ground ball mentality off the
Speaker 4: mounts ranking balls hit the ball of the ground, you
Speaker 4: put it in the air, it's and to ride out
Speaker 4: of the ballpark. Then the humidor came into play. We
Speaker 4: played on't know how many years there without realizing that
Speaker 4: the balls were shrinking and getting harder and going farther
Speaker 4: because we were just putting them in a closet at
Speaker 4: and eighty feet above su le. So the humidor kind
Speaker 4: of slowed things down and made it a bit more normal.
Speaker 4: I do think in Colorado in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 4: I think we stumbled into the code. It's not like
Speaker 4: we said, Okay, we're going to do this because of that.
Speaker 4: But we had power on the corners, we had strength
Speaker 4: of defense up the middle. We had five pitchers that
Speaker 4: pretty much all had different skill sets. It wasn't a
Speaker 4: one size bit tall. And then I was bullpen. We
Speaker 4: had arms slots almost from nine o'clock on your clock
Speaker 4: to three o'clock around the board, both right hand and
Speaker 4: left hand the lineup. We could beat you different wings.
Speaker 4: We could beat you with power, we could beat you
Speaker 4: with speed. One of the things that many people realize
Speaker 4: is the defense we played that year. We set a
Speaker 4: field it's a major league record still today for the
Speaker 4: fielding percentage set in the National League. And it wasn't
Speaker 4: a bunch of gold gliverers. I mean, yes, you had
Speaker 4: too low and yes you know you had help, and
Speaker 4: both of them ended up winning go but hid Garrett
Speaker 4: Atkins at third. You had Kasmntsu at second, get holiday
Speaker 4: Hop in the outfield. Tavares was a go get in center,
Speaker 4: but we played airtight defense. We had a lockdown bullpen,
Speaker 4: and again our starters gave us what we needed. And
Speaker 4: I think sometimes different people get in different roles and
Speaker 4: situations and they try and recreate things. I just know this.
Speaker 4: If you took the team that won the World Series
Speaker 4: every year and put them in Coors Field the next year,
Speaker 4: they would win a lot of ball games because they
Speaker 4: played good baseball. And by recreating something or think you've
Speaker 4: got something on your hands that there's fear or there's anxiety,
Speaker 4: I think you worse than it. I still think we're
Speaker 4: structuring to play good, solid, defensive, fundamental baseball. I do
Speaker 4: think you have to have variety on your pitching staff
Speaker 4: with armslaughts, and velocities and spin. But I also think
Speaker 4: you need to meet the pitchers where they are because
Speaker 4: you know what you can still get away with hand
Speaker 4: high fastballs or hiring career. Still a curveball still breaks.
Speaker 4: We ran away from some things based on what we
Speaker 4: thought were realities, and basically it's never been more disappointing
Speaker 4: the offensive value we've put on the field the last
Speaker 4: two years, for the venue and the environment which we
Speaker 4: get in which is mind bogging, And we're cutting some
Speaker 4: teeth with some younger players, but it wasn't all the
Speaker 4: younger players that are doing a lot of the punching out.
Speaker 4: So we have tried to as far as just recalibrate.
Speaker 4: We started with a draft three years ago. We were
Speaker 4: short on pitching, so as a big influx back to
Speaker 4: back years to draft, collecting arms, moving some people around
Speaker 4: the All Star break, moving people over the winter, getting
Speaker 4: winning some of the heavier contracts to bring in better
Speaker 4: contracts because we still have some the money. That's hard
Speaker 4: on the table with some people. But recreating a better
Speaker 4: pitching depth, a better pitching supply, creating more versatile and
Speaker 4: athletic ball players. Speed still needs to play at that level.
Speaker 4: We weren't stolen bases, weren't even a thing until you know,
Speaker 4: we got Doyle and Tobor and a few other guys.
Speaker 4: Now that's been recreated. So I do think through the
Speaker 4: draft we're finding our way back as we're going to
Speaker 4: be pushing good baseball players and good pitchers up to
Speaker 4: the Major League level. We still play in a very
Speaker 4: challenging division. You know, there's no doubt about that. But
Speaker 4: and I hate to use the word but truthfully, and
Speaker 4: I tell this to people, I would not be with
Speaker 4: the Rockies if I didn't believe in what we were doing.
Speaker 4: I'm sixty seven, and I don't mean that I'm on
Speaker 4: my debt, but I have better to do with my
Speaker 4: time if I'm not gonna just go up and just oh,
Speaker 4: I'm a Rocky, I got a job. I believe we're
Speaker 4: making a difference. I believe in the direction we're headed in.
Speaker 4: The fan base deserves it. My goodness, we still draw
Speaker 4: two and a half almost two and a half million
Speaker 4: people a year. We've lost one hundred games the back
Speaker 4: to back seasons, and these fans are still coming out.
Speaker 4: It's time we fed the fans. If the fans look,
Speaker 4: you're across the pond. I love that term. But you're
Speaker 4: a fan. You're wearing a Rockies jersey. I'm not sure
Speaker 4: what emblem was on top of.
Speaker 3: Russell's hat, Hills perhaps, but I.
Speaker 4: Mean, we've got bands still global. You know that that
Speaker 4: are around. I just know the joy I saw there
Speaker 4: in two thousand and seven, we went to the World Series,
Speaker 4: and I just would love to be a small part
Speaker 4: of that. Again. That's what I'm hoping, that's what I'm
Speaker 4: pushing for.
Speaker 2: I'm having for that tea. I love the honset, thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So obviously as we figures of the way through your Korea,
Speaker 5: then the seasons after two two thousand and seven didn't
Speaker 5: procress the way you want it.
Speaker 3: You will let go.
Speaker 5: In two thousand and nine, you had a small stint
Speaker 5: with MLB Network. It's kind of like doing some kind
Speaker 5: of like analyst that broadcasting. Did you have the itch
Speaker 5: that you knew that you wanted to get back into
Speaker 5: to managing pretty soon after you you will let go
Speaker 5: and you were just waiting for that moment to happen.
Speaker 5: Or was it a special conversation that you had with
Speaker 5: with the pirates that kind of brought you back into it.
Speaker 4: I don't think that I ever thought that, hey, there's
Speaker 4: no problem, I'll just do this MLB thing because I
Speaker 4: got fired this year. Next year I'll be managing a team.
Speaker 4: Never gave that a thought. Matter of fact, the following year,
Speaker 4: in twenty ten, it was pushing up to the winner
Speaker 4: and I didn't have a coach. I had a couple offers,
Speaker 4: but they didn't make sense for me. I was going
Speaker 4: to go back to MLB and sign a you know,
Speaker 4: like a two or three year deal as an analyst.
Speaker 4: And then John Daniels, the guys over there, gave me
Speaker 4: a call about getting back into the game. And it
Speaker 4: wasn't a manager's job, but when they to me who
Speaker 4: it was, for the reasoning behind it. I've always been
Speaker 4: attracted to working for good people for the right reasons,
Speaker 4: and we have a common goal, and that's what we
Speaker 4: had in Texas. Now, after that year in Texas, I
Speaker 4: still wasn't thinking, Okay, I'm just gonna do one year
Speaker 4: in Texas and pop back in a dugout somewhere. It
Speaker 4: was a very good job, Russ. I could have been
Speaker 4: the hitting coach there. John was trying to keep me
Speaker 4: as a hitting coach there. I mean for real. And
Speaker 4: then there was a couple teams. I interviewed for two
Speaker 4: teams that winter and got deep in both interviews. One
Speaker 4: was with the Mets and one was with the Pirates.
Speaker 4: And then I knew it at least became real because
Speaker 4: I kept getting interviews and I kept going and the
Speaker 4: Mets said, oh, we're three weeks away. The Pirates were like, hey,
Speaker 4: we want you to manage tomorrow. And I had to
Speaker 4: give that some time and some thought until the Pirates,
Speaker 4: I can't decide by tomorrow. Can you give me a
Speaker 4: little bigger window? They said yes. I went back talk
Speaker 4: to the Mets because truthfully, everybody in my inner circle
Speaker 4: was pushing for me to go manage in New York.
Speaker 4: I was the only person that thought the Pirates job
Speaker 4: was a good idea because on the surface, eighteen consecutive
Speaker 4: losing seasons, you know, they'd lost, they had lost a
Speaker 4: hundred games and back to back seasons. But I just
Speaker 4: kept being lad, you know I have I have a
Speaker 4: big I have a faith that's real. And I was
Speaker 4: being loud. I said, I don't know what it is,
Speaker 4: but I really believe that I meant to manage in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 4: I was attracted to the Pirates as a kid. You know,
Speaker 4: they had they had the most god awful uniforms you
Speaker 4: could ever have, and they just beat everybody. It was
Speaker 4: just the family, the Yellow, the Black. When you do
Speaker 4: into Pittsburgh as a former player, you either loved Pittsburgh
Speaker 4: or you hate it. There was no one between. I
Speaker 4: always appreciate it, the hard working mentality, and I thought,
Speaker 4: what a better place to have another shot? Blue collar
Speaker 4: people a handshakes reel, they work hard for their money.
Speaker 4: They've proven to be a great fan base. They do
Speaker 4: it in hockey, they do it in football, they used
Speaker 4: to do it in baseball. I was just led to
Speaker 4: come to get back in that spot. And you know,
Speaker 4: I fortunately land in a job and was there nine years,
Speaker 4: and we had a really significant three year run there,
Speaker 4: which validated all my reasons for why I wanted to
Speaker 4: be there. Now, I feel very blessed to have had
Speaker 4: that opportunity. I think anybody in life, when you get
Speaker 4: a second opportunity, you have a shot to be better.
Speaker 4: You've learned things on the first one that there were
Speaker 4: things I did in Pittsburgh I never thought of doing
Speaker 4: in Colorado. And there's some things I thought you had
Speaker 4: to do in color I didn't even think about doing
Speaker 4: in Pittsburgh. You learn as you go, and I was
Speaker 4: fortunate that I was given another opportunity.
Speaker 5: And from that time, like in between you, I don't
Speaker 5: know if this is right or wrong for what I've
Speaker 5: read from bios or not, but This gave the idea
Speaker 5: that like this is where you picked up an idea
Speaker 5: about like save of metrics, about like what additional things
Speaker 5: could be done that you may picked up some of
Speaker 5: your time in Texas, some of the time actually at
Speaker 5: MLB Network, But those that Rockies team, sort of the
Speaker 5: Rockies team, that Pirates team that you then took on board,
Speaker 5: was one of the really earlier helped his full things
Speaker 5: like shifting and that side of things. So how did
Speaker 5: how did you inculporate that sort of thing like into
Speaker 5: your management that second time round?
Speaker 4: I had to tuck the grumpy old man in my
Speaker 4: back pocket and tell him to leave the building. And
Speaker 4: I want to applaud you guys. You know I did
Speaker 4: a little work. I talked to Josh or you talked
Speaker 4: to about this podcast. He said, these guys are interesting,
Speaker 4: they're invested, they're all in. You guys have done your
Speaker 4: homework and in your research. This makes this very enjoyable
Speaker 4: for me. But when I went into Pittsburgh, we were
Speaker 4: probably as invested in analytics as any team in baseball.
Speaker 4: Probably Tampa and Pittsburgh. We were doing things at the
Speaker 4: minor league level that no other teams were doing. The
Speaker 4: two of us. Over the course of the next five years,
Speaker 4: everybody in baseball got involved, but early on it was
Speaker 4: us in Tampa, and I can remember the first year
Speaker 4: them bringing things to my table and I was like, well,
Speaker 4: wait a minute, what do you mean the third hitter
Speaker 4: on your team is not the most important hitter. I
Speaker 4: can remember this conversation like was yesterday, and it was like, okay, well,
Speaker 4: this was a year after I'd managed to go, well,
Speaker 4: Andrew McCutcheon, you hit him third all year And I said, well, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's because the baddest dude on your team hits third,
Speaker 4: I mean Larry Walker. And they go, well, I know
Speaker 4: that's the thought, but Andrew McCutcheon actually went to the
Speaker 4: plate one hundred or two hundred and twelve times with
Speaker 4: two outs and nobody on and he's your best hitter.
Speaker 4: And I'm like what, And I said, okay, you got
Speaker 4: my attention, bring me more. So we started slowly, taking
Speaker 4: small bites, slowly, then really sitting an older guy, an
Speaker 4: old school at baseball guy, and just sharing with him
Speaker 4: how meaningful some analytics can be, not all of them,
Speaker 4: because not all new information is good. You know, that
Speaker 4: doesn't make it good because it's new, but when you
Speaker 4: can put value to it. And then what we were
Speaker 4: able to do in Pittsburgh was to make a hybrid
Speaker 4: situation human analytics, the eyeball test that got test, the
Speaker 4: nuts test, and take the numerical, you know, the analytic
Speaker 4: part of it, leveraging your bullpen, leveraging your line up
Speaker 4: certain matchups against certain guys, and combined the two, which
Speaker 4: what what made it meaningful and what pulled everybody together.
Speaker 4: And to this day I have a saying now I
Speaker 4: actually use in the book and said, it's not about
Speaker 4: old school versus news school, It's about being in school.
Speaker 4: And in Pittsburgh, I was able to find my way
Speaker 4: back in thistry.
Speaker 5: No that that that's amazing to hear, because we've recently
Speaker 5: spoken to people like Kyle Body and and and Zach Scott,
Speaker 5: and they always talked about the fact that like the
Speaker 5: culture is actually kind of like the keyst part of
Speaker 5: like for for making those decisions. So I kind of
Speaker 5: tip my cat to you as as as someone who's
Speaker 5: come in and had their had their time and the
Speaker 5: place to kind of to give those individuals like the
Speaker 5: chance to to show you what's what and to kind
Speaker 5: of you to take it on board. It's it's it's
Speaker 5: always a difficult thing to change your own color.
Speaker 4: To well change. You know, change can bring upon controversy.
Speaker 4: But again, there's a man myth out there. I dug
Speaker 4: myself into this sole I'll get myself out. So you're
Speaker 4: gonna trust the guy that dug the hole to get
Speaker 4: you out at Nobody bats a thousand. Nobody bats a
Speaker 4: thousand and their decisions. And I took it upon myself
Speaker 4: and say, you know what, they put some really smart
Speaker 4: people in this room. I need to trust and lean
Speaker 4: into them, and let's see how smart we can be together.
Speaker 4: And truthfully, you know, when you win a manager of
Speaker 4: the Year award like I was awarded in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 4: it wasn't because I was the best manager of the year.
Speaker 4: I don't think it was because I had really good players.
Speaker 4: There's no manager's team that finished in fourth place that
Speaker 4: ever won a manager of the Year award. And some
Speaker 4: of the moves we made that year, whether it was Neil,
Speaker 4: whether it was Dan Fox, whether it was bringing kids
Speaker 4: up from the farm system, it was such a collective effort.
Speaker 4: And that was like it was in Colorado. But that's
Speaker 4: when you see success happen is when egos are pushed aside.
Speaker 4: Everybody's pulling together and we really want to celebrate each
Speaker 4: other's success. It's not just our own.
Speaker 3: No, that's amazing.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: I do want to ask you very quickly about twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: It's taken up so much of your time already, so
Speaker 1: I do apologize, and we'll we'll wrap soom that twenty
Speaker 1: thirteen season. You mentioned obviously how fun it was to
Speaker 1: bring winning back to course Field with the Rockies in
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, and you did something very similar
Speaker 1: with the Pirates.
Speaker 2: In twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: Obviously twenty straight losing seasons and then that amazing season
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen. And I want to talk about that
Speaker 1: Wildcard game specifically. And I'm not a fan of the Pirates,
Speaker 1: of course, but I vividly remember watching that there in
Speaker 1: PNC Park and the home run by Russell Martin and
Speaker 1: just the chaos that ensued that one game. And I know,
Speaker 1: ultimately you know that the team didn't go to the
Speaker 1: World Series, But what did it feel like to bring
Speaker 1: that feeling back to a city that hadn't had it
Speaker 1: in such a long time.
Speaker 4: Well, it's been one of the most rewarding things I've
Speaker 4: ever been involved in, and for a lot of different reasons.
Speaker 4: One of the first things I did when I was
Speaker 4: in Pittsburgh is I went up to the people that
Speaker 4: sell the season tickets and I said, look, I have
Speaker 4: no idea how hard it's been. I'm just telling you,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna do everything I can to help make your
Speaker 4: job easier if we move forward together. Because when you
Speaker 4: win more games, it's easier to sell tickets. When you
Speaker 4: don't win games, it's hard to sell tickets, and they're
Speaker 4: the ones on the phone on the other end getting
Speaker 4: yelled at, getting bitched at getting you know whatever, it
Speaker 4: is to see the joy that that season brought downtown vendors, hotels, restaurants,
Speaker 4: every employee in the organization, especially the people selling the
Speaker 4: season tickets and the corporate sponsorships. To see that North
Speaker 4: Shore area just revitalized, and to know that game. I
Speaker 4: don't think I felt the full impact of that game
Speaker 4: until later on in the winter. But there were there
Speaker 4: were kids at that game that, you know, we're twenty
Speaker 4: five years old and had never you know that they
Speaker 4: didn't remember when they were five, but had never seen
Speaker 4: a winning season and a grandfather went with a father
Speaker 4: who brought his son, so he had three generations of people,
Speaker 4: whether it be female, grandmother's, you know, mother's kids at
Speaker 4: that game. Now, the beauty of it is because we
Speaker 4: hold thirty nine thousand people today. If I go back
Speaker 4: to Pittsburgh and would walk around town, seventy five thousand
Speaker 4: people were at that game that night. Because everybody will
Speaker 4: tell you that wild Card game in twenty thirteen, that
Speaker 4: was the most amazing game. And it reminded me of
Speaker 4: when I first went to Pittsburgh and people were telling
Speaker 4: me about Masarowski shot against the Yankees, the walk off
Speaker 4: home were in Game seven in nineteen sixty. I heard
Speaker 4: so many people tell me about that, so I looked
Speaker 4: up Forbes Field thirty eight thousand people and one hundred
Speaker 4: thousand people told me they were at the game. But
Speaker 4: I mean, that's what joy it brings, because you know
Speaker 4: what people were at the game. They might not have
Speaker 4: been in the stadium, but they were watching who knows
Speaker 4: wherever they were a part of it. They were invested.
Speaker 4: I've been on a run the last couple of years
Speaker 4: with a football team in America, the Detroit Lions. I've
Speaker 4: been a Detroit Lion fan for sixty two years. Wow,
Speaker 4: that's it's been hard. But now the joy in the
Speaker 4: last couple of years. So it's just a joy. And
Speaker 4: there's a term for it, guys. You may have heard
Speaker 4: me talk about it. It's a Buddhist term. It's called
Speaker 4: moudita mud ita. What it means is showing expressive joy
Speaker 4: for the success of others. And that's what it comes
Speaker 4: down to. To look at those stands. I can remember
Speaker 4: looking in the stands during that run in Colorado, looking
Speaker 4: in the stands in Pittsburgh, and that you know, obviously
Speaker 4: through the thirteen seasons, but then in fourteen and fift
Speaker 4: we won ninety eight games. In twenty fifteen, but the
Speaker 4: stadiums packed every night, and to see people showing up
Speaker 4: and just the family atmosphere, the joy. The game of
Speaker 4: baseball's magic anyway, but when you add the hometown team
Speaker 4: does good and they've got their favorite players and all that,
Speaker 4: it's just been one of the things that's made my
Speaker 4: motor run my time like I still does. You can
Speaker 4: tell how excited I am talking about it now. So
Speaker 4: it was significant in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 2: That's just the beauty of sport, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I think it's just that being able to evote those
Speaker 1: feelings in someone that's extraordinary to hear.
Speaker 2: I'll ask my last question.
Speaker 1: I'll let us get one into But having managed the
Speaker 1: Rockies and the Pirates, I think there are similarities between
Speaker 1: those two teams, and I'm fascinated in sort of the
Speaker 1: way you look back at your experience of managing those
Speaker 1: two teams and maybe the legacy you have with those
Speaker 1: fan bases. I know you didn't end up winning a
Speaker 1: World Series with those teams, and sometimes you know that's
Speaker 1: all the matters, right is did you win a ring?
Speaker 2: On arts and people? That's all they care about.
Speaker 1: But I think for those two fan bases, and I'll
Speaker 1: certainly speak as a Rockies fan, you know, the era
Speaker 1: we had when you were there was was so special
Speaker 1: beyond you know the meaning of those titles or whatever
Speaker 1: it might be, but that feeling that you're invoked in people,
Speaker 1: I think, and those teams of voting people was so special.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated in how you look back at that and
Speaker 1: how fans approach you even today, just looking back at
Speaker 1: that as a time that teams that teams that have
Speaker 1: been struggling for success, and I.
Speaker 2: We're desperate for something.
Speaker 1: We're able to write around their teams in ways that
Speaker 1: they hadn't really been able to for so long, and
Speaker 1: even since then, maybe haven't quite a minute.
Speaker 2: Nice to get back to those highs again.
Speaker 4: Well, I think when you're in the moment, you always
Speaker 4: kind of think you have an understanding of what's going on.
Speaker 4: And I did. I thought I had an understanding of
Speaker 4: what was going on when you get fired and are
Speaker 4: asked to leave and your swipe card no longer works
Speaker 4: in either one of those buildings and now you remove
Speaker 4: And I truthfully, it was during COVID that it all
Speaker 4: hit me like a wave on a beach, because they
Speaker 4: started replaying the games in Colorado an MLB networ they
Speaker 4: started replaying the games in Pittsburgh. People started reaching out,
Speaker 4: podcast interviews, whatever, and it was almost like like it
Speaker 4: was a recreation of the fan base started saying hey,
Speaker 4: we remember you, Hey remember when or whatever. And to
Speaker 4: this day now, and some of it's probably got to
Speaker 4: do with the book, but there's been an appreciation that
Speaker 4: I probably never realized that they're thankful, and they're thankful
Speaker 4: for the same reasons why I was thankful. It was
Speaker 4: an honor to be the manager of the Rockies, it
Speaker 4: was an honor to be the manager of the Pirates.
Speaker 4: And I took my job seriously. I didn't take myself seriously.
Speaker 4: I didn't bat a thousand with the decisions I made,
Speaker 4: but I gave it everything I had. And I think
Speaker 4: the acknowledgement of the fan base is now that they're
Speaker 4: appreciative of that. They've seen a lot of things since
Speaker 4: then in both places, and they're reaching out now just
Speaker 4: thanking me for my service, thanking me for my efforts
Speaker 4: the community, whatever it was involved in. That makes it
Speaker 4: very special, and it makes it like a big, warm hug.
Speaker 4: And to this day, you know, if I go back
Speaker 4: and say October boom the conversation to start, and I
Speaker 4: was here, I remember this, And if I go back
Speaker 4: to Pittsburgh and all I going to just say, raise
Speaker 4: the job, Roger, and they're, oh, my gosh, thirteen fourteen,
Speaker 4: fifteen and the things that happened there. So it's pretty
Speaker 4: significant in the fact that there was no World Series Championship,
Speaker 4: as you said, because that is what a lot of
Speaker 4: people hold on to. But what I've found out is
Speaker 4: what people really hold on to or the relationships you
Speaker 4: build with them and the time that you're with them
Speaker 4: and the way you go about your work and represent
Speaker 4: their team. And that's what I feel good about that.
Speaker 4: I always honored the name on the front of the
Speaker 4: jersey and I try to take care of the name
Speaker 4: on the back because that was my family. And I
Speaker 4: think the fans have been appreciated that in agreement.
Speaker 3: No, that's that's amazing to hear.
Speaker 5: And I kind of feel that My last question now,
Speaker 5: which is completely utally random, is gonna is gonna full
Speaker 5: flat slightly afterwards, but I kind of wanted to know
Speaker 5: if do you know that you have managed in the
Speaker 5: last tide game in Mighty League Baseball.
Speaker 4: I didn't know that, but I do know because every
Speaker 4: once in a while somebody will ask me to do
Speaker 4: They'll they'll do a bio on me for something, and
Speaker 4: they'll put my record down. They'll put wins lost, and
Speaker 4: then they'll put a one like after and I'm like,
Speaker 4: what what's the one? I go, Oh, my god, we
Speaker 4: had a tied game and I'm trying to think of
Speaker 4: it was Miami.
Speaker 5: Now I might against the Cubs, I think in twenty
Speaker 5: sex Okay, in twenty sixteen, it was like a September
Speaker 5: twenty ninth game that just go rained out and there
Speaker 5: was no need to play it for the once the
Speaker 5: season ended.
Speaker 3: So, but that is the last Tide game.
Speaker 5: Obviously one could happen in the future in MLB, but
Speaker 5: as it stands right now, we have not had a
Speaker 5: tight game since then.
Speaker 4: And I'm gonna hang my hat on that rust and
Speaker 4: I'm going to give you one other meaningless stat that
Speaker 4: I can hold. It's still true today. If I asked you,
Speaker 4: and this is a loaded question now, but who hit
Speaker 4: the last home run at Metropolitan Stadium in Minnesota, Your
Speaker 4: guest would not have been me. But I hit a
Speaker 4: home I hit the last home run in Metropolitan Stadium
Speaker 4: before they took They tore it down and built the
Speaker 4: Metro Dome. Now, the funny thing was the third basement
Speaker 4: was a good friend of mine, Pete mccannon, who later
Speaker 4: managed in the big leagues with the Phillies. Pete hit
Speaker 4: a home run like in this bottom of the seventh,
Speaker 4: and he was running the basis like he just hit
Speaker 4: a walk off thinking because we all knew it was
Speaker 4: the last game, there's going to be a last of everything.
Speaker 4: He ran the bases and he's waving his arms and
Speaker 4: the people coming out and they're high five of him.
Speaker 4: And the top of the eighth, I hit a home run.
Speaker 4: As I'm running around the bases, he meets me at
Speaker 4: shortstop in my ear, yelling at me while I'm running
Speaker 4: around third and actually hits me with his glove as
Speaker 4: that I'm round third base coming to home and not
Speaker 4: many people know that that I hit the last home
Speaker 4: run at Metropolitan and I've got the last tie game
Speaker 4: as a manager. Those are the kind of things that
Speaker 4: stile legends are built up.
Speaker 5: Right there, probably one of the only home runs, and
Speaker 5: you're getting booed by one of your own players hitting.
Speaker 2: That is amazing. Wells Clinton, Yeah, thank you, saying.
Speaker 4: I'm glad we pulled it off. I had no idea
Speaker 4: what to expect, and you guys, you guys are good fans,
Speaker 4: You're good people.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed myself. Thank you for the opportunity. No,
Speaker 1: we've had such a blast chatting with you. I could
Speaker 1: literally sit here and ask questions for hours, but I won't.
Speaker 1: I will say thanks so much for joining us, and
Speaker 1: I will encourage people to buy your new book of
Speaker 1: course and check that out, but also to follow you
Speaker 1: on social media or you're very active on social an
Speaker 1: amazing message of positivity and joy, so people should should
Speaker 1: check that out and obviously check out the work you're
Speaker 1: doing with Rockies as well this season.
Speaker 2: Best of luck with that, and I hope you get
Speaker 2: a chance to catch up scene.
Speaker 1: But thanks again, Clint, we really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Neither one of you guys ever get over to Todates.
Speaker 4: Let me know we'll find a way to connect.
Speaker 1: Really kind, Thanks so much, Clinton, and thanks everyone for listening. Goodbye,