Legend Clint Hurdle Talks Omaha & Baseball

Legend Clint Hurdle Talks Omaha & Baseball

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It is the second annual Stella Olsen Foundation Scholarship and
Legacy Awards event. A night full of stars, and the
keynote speaker is a guy who's had a lot of
success as a coach, manager and just a career, a
life spent in baseball, and he's joining us on a
phone line. Former manager and MLB player and the manager
of the Year for the Pirates back in twenty thirteen.

(00:21):
Clint Hurdle joining us on the phone line. Clint, thank
you so much for being on our show today.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
You are still very welcome. I'm looking forward to getting
back to Omaha.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Yeah, Omaha's got it. It's a very special place in
this baseball world of ours that we love to talk about.
And you know, I talk about a lot of other
things too, but baseball is something that just means an
awful lot to me, and I know it means a
lot to the people who are in this community. What
does it mean to you, Well, baseball.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Has been a lifelong endeavor. My dad looked down at me.
I was five years old. Sixty two years You don't
ask if I wanted to play catch things has never
been the same. It's about community, It's about teamwork, it's
about cohesion, it's about sacrifice. You win, you lose, you're
happy or sad. So you've got everything that life brings

(01:09):
to the table. And it's fun to do it with
somebody else and somebody else other people that you enjoyed
doing it with. So I'm gonna love for the game.
I'm looking forward to sharing and seeing some people in Omaha.
You know, back in the day one hundred years ago,
I was playing right field at that old Rosenblack Stadium
in nineteen seventy seven. How about that? Yah?

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Yeah, I mean the amount of legends that have come
through Omaha in different ways, it's pretty awesome stuff. Now
you mentioned that, and we'll talk a little bit about
Saturday and what you're going to be doing Saturday real quick.
But you're still very Oh we ended up just losing
Clint off of the line there, but we'll see if
we can get him to call back here momentarily, but
live live radio, you know, just sometimes stuff happens. But

(01:54):
hopefully he calls back and we're getting him back on
the air here. But let's just make sure he is
locked and loaded. It's just one of those days sometimes,
you know what I'm saying, Okay, so here we are
Clint Hurdle joining us back on the phone line. Thank
you Clint for being a part of our show today
once again. But what I was saying was, you're still

(02:16):
very active in baseball, right You're kind of busy right
now as spring training is going on.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
I'm busy. I was in Arizona for a couple of weeks.
I've come home for some family things that take care
of I'll go back. I'm a special assistant to the
general manager of the Colorado Rockies, a team that I
spent fifteen years with, initially as a minor league hitting
coordinator and major league hitting coaching and the manager great seasons.
So I'm still engaged, still with my finger on the

(02:42):
bull spending most of my time in player development, which
means I'm putting eyes on the young players and pictures
that we're developing that are affiliates such as Omaha, the
ones we have Albuquerque, Spokane, Fresno, in Hartford, and I'm
sure and also helped maybe encourage and share some experience
strike over our young managers and coaches. So trying to
be a little bit of a GPS to something.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yes, that's awesome. Clint Hurdle joining us on the phone line,
So I got to be honest with you. I geeked
out a little bit when I knew I was gonna
have a chance to talk with you because one of
my favorite I'm a White Sox fan through and through,
but I just love baseball so much I kind of
adopt teams. And one of the most memorable teams of
my entire life was the two thousand and seven Color
Out of Rockies. And I watched that team in August

(03:24):
win something like twenty two of twenty three games toward
the end of the season to get into the playoffs.
They won one of the great games ever played in
that game one sixty three against San Diego, and then
you know, made it all the way to the World Series.
It was truly one of the few Cinderella runs that
you know, you'll ever see in baseball. With the team
that just comes out of nowhere like this all the
way to playing for a World Series. What about that

(03:46):
team exemplifies baseball to you.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
I think the thing about that team was we were
never hot, we were never cold. We just kept playing,
we kept working, we kept believing, and then towards the
end we got certifiably red hot. The joy that I
saw though throughout the season, and you see it on
some teams, You'll see it on every team. I played
on teams that had it, I played on teams that
don't have it. It's a Buddhist term. It's called new

(04:12):
deta mud ita, and what it means is showing expressive
joy for the success of others. I played on a
handful of teams that had it, I played on handful
of teams didn't have it. That team that I managed,
those guys were so connected, they were so unselfish, they
were so respective of the skill sets of others. They

(04:32):
just they gelled, they meshed, they had fun together, they
won together, they lost together. There was days we sparked together.
That was probably the thing that I admired the most
out of them, is the way they embraced each other's
successes and how different guys kept showing up different nights
to help the cause.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, that Rocky team was incredible, and you turned the
Pittsburgh Pirates around as manager as well and got them
to the greatest sights that they've had in the last
twenty five years. For sure. With that all being said,
you've been like you mentioned, around the game for a
really long time, and the game is changing at a
very rapid pace with rule changes, with structure changes. You're
seeing what the Dodgers are doing with the way that

(05:10):
they're kind of manipulating the salaries and making sure, you know,
they can get as many great players as possible. What
is from your perspective, a guy Clint Hurtle, who has
been in baseball as long as you have been at
so many different jobs in different levels, what's the state
of the game right now at the major league level?

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Well, the state of the game. The game's still interesting.
I think we lost interest in the game for a
period of time. Not everybody fell in love with the
same game of baseball. You know, my dad's ninety one.
He fell in love with a game of baseball that
I got to watch a little bit of. But I
was in a time with and frame where I was
the game I played, loved it, the game I coached

(05:49):
and manager I love it. Rule changes, expansion, there's more movement.
There has been more front office, revolutionary ideas come into play,
the analytics now involved. So the game has dead, I
do think, I want to say in some areas we've
marginalized the game. And what I mean by that is,

(06:12):
since we couldn't do what we used to be able
to do, we just changed the rules to make it easier,
I guess, and make it more visibly collar to watch.
I understand that at the same point we have lost sight.
I think a little bit in some areas that there's
human beings involved in this game. It's not just all
an analytics that's driven. There's a heart to these men

(06:32):
that play it. There's a heart to the coaches and
managers that coach it. When you remove the heart and
look at it like it's a chess game, you know
from forty thousand feet that people become pieces and people
should never be confused as pieces. So I think there's
a place for all of it. The best organizations out
there functioning right now have a hybrid situation where they're
using human analytics and they're using the numbers, the analytics,

(06:54):
the data, you know, the research and data. They're combining
the two and they're finding smart people to shovel that
to the coaches, who then are smart enough to put
it indigestible bites for the players. Some cases, it's been overwhelming.
Some of my guys contemporars don't like any part of it.
I'm trying to learn to find the good in it.
I think it's still twofold men still are playing the game.

(07:17):
It's still a great game, and we got to find
a way to keep it that way because we want
people to have an opportunity to appreciate, you know, the
game that I fell in love with. You know, one
of the things I see that we're kind of swinging
back and I think we get a big high five
from everybody in this the All Star Game next year,
each player is going to wear his team's jersey. Yes,
I mean I can remember those days and that meant something.
And then it just got kind of wild, like we

(07:38):
were trying to sell jerseys. That was it. You know,
these kind of weird they were different for us. They
were different. It wasn't something that I was a Pig fan.
I'm so glad we're going swinging back with some old
school usable practic because at the end of the day,
it's not old school versus news school. It's about being
in school.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Ah Na. See, there's one of those hurdleisms which I'll
let you plug you here in a second, but you're
going to be speaking here in Elma A Clint Hurdle
on the phone line with us Cassio Steakhouse Saturday, six o'clock.
It's the night full of Stars for our friends at
to Stella Olsen Foundation, and of course we know they're
trying to allow kids in our communities to have a
chance to play this game and be a part of

(08:17):
teams and stuff like this. What can we expect to
hear from you as the keynote speaker is part of
that night.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Well, I'm going to share I think everybody likes a
baseball story or two. I'm going to share a stage
with Greg Olsen and Jim Henry, two people I've known
are respected in the game of baseball a long time. Actually,
Tim mccowski is the guy that reached out to be
Mark pain That I've known Mark for a long time.
I'm aware of Tim. We've become better friends now. I
think what we're serving here is the greater good. We're

(08:44):
serving trying to put money, a bunch of money to
put some scholarships and thrust some kids and give them
opportunities to play baseball. But you're going to hear a
little bit of my story, you know, what I found
out along my journey, and I think maybe some questions
I have I got and maybe the differences I got
a little bit older, you know, the lens I used

(09:05):
from coaching to managing, and basically I did some partmentalize
that all into a small book that's easy to digest.
But most of all, I want to be an ambassador
of the game and I want to share some things
with the people that are there that night, maybe they
haven't heard before, or give them another perspective on which
is a way to look at things.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah, and it's going to be awesome. Our own Jim
Rose is going to be the MC of the evening
over there at Castio's Steakhouse on Saturday at six pm,
and Clint Hurdle, former Major League manager and player, going
to be the keynote speaker as part of the night's festivities. Clint,
this was fantastic. I'm so happy we had a chance
to chat with you. We'll send some people over there
for that fantastic work that you guys are going to

(09:45):
be doing on Saturday, and hopefully we get a chance
to chat about baseball again in the future.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
I would love to do it. Feel free to reach
out to me. Good luck.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
That awesome, Thank you so much. That is Clint Hurtle
who has been very successful in the game of baseball
and is trying to help us here Omaha with our
friends at the Stella Olsen Foundation, which, by the way,
Stella Olsen Foundation dot org. That is where you're going
to find the information about this Saturday's event in ways
that you can be a part of the Foundation's mission.
It is four twenty nine. We'll come back with more

(10:13):
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