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Fennelly: Hurdle Finally Connects With Help From His Angel

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By MARTIN FENNELLY | The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 24, 2007

BOSTON - Clint Hurdle's dad, Big Clint, is on the phone from his home in Merritt Island. He wants to read you the English paper his son wrote, dated 2/10/66, when Clint was a third-grader. Big Clint saved it in plastic.

If I were a great baseball player, I'd try to be the great baseball player ever, just like Babe Ruth.

But I know I couldn't do that in one day, anyway. I'm only normal and besides I'm just in third grade.

Big Clint laughed.

"He made it just the same."

Clint and all the Hurdles.

Clint and Maddie most of all.

The Can't Miss Kid
Clinton Merrick Hurdle, 50, the upbeat Colorado Rockies manager, was once The Can't Miss Kid. His good looks adorned a 1978 Sports Illustrated cover. He was going to be the next great thing for the Kansas City Royals.

He swung and missed.

He is a reformed alcoholic and a man with two failed marriages in his past. He managed the last five years in Colorado without a winning season.

Now he's on top.

Rockies top.
Colorado's runaway miracle, winner of 21 of its past 22, is at Fenway Park for the World Series. At one point this season, the Rockies spent 40 straight days in last place. They were next-to-last with 14 games left. They have come from nowhere.

So has Clint Hurdle.

Here's to underdogs.
"He kept swinging his whole life," said Rockies bench coach Jamie Quirk, Hurdle's friend since their Kansas City playing days. "Clint never did quit."

"I really believe we're prepared for our future through our past," Hurdle said. "I really believe if we listen and we watch, we can learn."

His greatest teacher? His 5-year-old daughter Madison, who was born with Prader-Willi Syndrome, a profound genetic disorder that produces epileptic seizures and affects appetite, behavior and cognitive and motor skills.

"Maddie is his angel," said Clint's mom, Louise.

Bobbi Jo Martello, Clint's kid sister, agreed.

"Maddie has taken Clint to a place where he'd never been. She led the way. Maddie is one tough little kid."

Life is never Can't Miss.
What you do with that is what matters.
Clint Hurdle once lived the dream he wrote about in third grade. Chuck Goldfarb was his baseball coach at Merritt Island High, where Hurdle earned a football scholarship to quarterback at Miami, but chose baseball.

"All that talent and he was the hardest worker, too," Goldfarb said.

The Royals made the 6-foot-3 Hurdle, then just 17, the ninth pick of the 1975 draft. In his second major-league at-bat, he hit a homer. In his third major-league game, he batted cleanup.

"There was no way he wouldn't succeed," Quirk said.

He didn't.

Royals manager Whitey Herzog wanted the phenom to be a slugger, while Royals hitting guru Charley Lau wanted Hurdle to be the next George Brett. "Clint would ask, 'Dad, what should I do?'" Big Clint said.

The Can't Miss Kid also never missed a night out. He ran with Brett and Quirk. They ran hard.

"George and I were stupid and young, but I always thought we were never as crazy as Clint," Quirk said. "When you're at the highest level and that young, you have the attitude that you're bulletproof. Clint just had more of that."

The Royals traded him after four seasons. Hurdle played for three more teams in the majors, even becoming a catcher to hang on, but he was done when he was 29, with a .259 average, 32 homers and 193 RBIs.

These days, he counsels young Rockies to take it slow.

"Patience has become a very important tool for me, and it's not one that's easily learned," Hurdle said. "Also, the importance of keeping humility in your back pocket. One of the best things I was ever told as a young player that I never understood until I was an older player is that there are two kinds of players, those that are humble and those that are about to be."

Rockies rookie shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, the seventh pick of the 2005 draft, said, "He told me just to relax, that this is going to take a while. The game doesn't come easy."

Nothing in life does.

Clint Hurdle quit drinking. He was saved by Karla, his third wife. "She's the one," Jamie Quirk said. "They have their son, Christian. And there's Maddie. She totally changed his perspective on baseball and life. You should see Clint with Maddie."

"God has a way of putting angels in just the right spot," Big Clint said.

Maddie Leads The Way
He looked at his baby girl in a hospital incubator with electrodes on her head. He cried when doctors told him why. Now he counts his blessings.

He tells himself it's only a game.

Clint Hurdle talked about his angel.

"Her purpose in life, and I think the purpose of many special-needs children in people's lives, can be dynamic. If you don't have one, you'll have no understanding ... You don't raise your hand to get to the front of this list. But once it happens, you're in.

"There's a period where you go through the grieving, the challenges, the big picture of the unknown."

But you keep swinging.

And learn from a tough little kid.

"With Maddie, it's one day at a time," Hurdle said.

His eyes glistened.

"At the end of the day, Karla and I look at each other and say, 'Did Maddie have a good day?' And when Maddie has a good day, everybody has a good day."

It's Rocktober in Denver. Colorado's baseball team has come from way back, like its manager. He never did break those records, but The Can't Miss Kid has finally connected. Winning a World Series would only make it sweeter.

Especially if Maddie has a good day.

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