‘Hurdle-isms’ turn into book for former skipper

Just like fathers and sons often form a bond tied together by baseball, Clint Hurdle started loving the game the day his dad, Big Clint, asked him, “Do you want to go outside and play catch?”

The former Pittsburgh Pirates manager was 5. A flame was lit.

Hurdle, now 67 and in his fourth season as Special Assistant to General Manager for the Colorado Rockies, feels so strongly about the game that he decided — with some friendly prodding — to write a book about how it has affected his life and that of those around him.

The book, “Hurdle-isms: Wit and Wisdom from a Lifetime in Baseball,” was recently released by publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. While in Scottsdale, Ariz., the Rockies’ spring training base, Hurdle spoke to Trib-Live about the book — from the idea’s inception through the writing and editing processes.

For years, people close to Hurdle, including a best-selling author and others he met while working for the Rockies, Pirates and Texas Rangers, had urged him to write a book. He liked the idea but wanted to do it his way.

“The book was never on my to-do list,” he said. “I said I never wanted to write a book as long as I was wearing a uniform. I didn’t feel comfortable with the format they were talking about. I didn’t want to write an autobiography.”

But Dave Burchett, a friend who produced Rangers games for TV, kept coaxing Hurdle to join him in the venture.

”(He) talked about sitting down and co-authoring a book about life lessons learned (by) both of us, me with over 40 years in baseball. He had over 40 years in TV production in baseball. Lessons learned professionally and personally.”

They wrote that book, but it has yet to be published.

”We had a rough draft and sent it out,” Hurdle said. “We kept getting the same answer back that they thought we had some good stuff, but the idea of two older white guys, truthfully, sharing leadership lessons was a very small demographic and probably wouldn’t have a very big reach.

“We got told no a lot to the point where David was talking about self-publishing the book. I told him I need to hold off on that thought because we did all this work — he did most of it — I just felt if we just keep with it, somebody will pick it up.”

Finally, he showed the book to author and friend Jon Gordon, who has written 17 best-sellers. Gordon liked it, but he told Hurdle, “The demographic’s not going to work. The publishers are younger. Editors are younger. You have to find something that’s going to grab somebody.”

Gordon suggested Hurdle go it alone.

“What are you afraid of?” Gordon said.

”Really, I was,” Hurdle said. “Rejection. Would it be any good? Those were big enough shadows in my mind that I wanted some support. Jon kept kind of goading me and challenging me in a positive way. He said, ‘Clint, I’ve been writing down things you said for 14 years. I call them Hurdle-isms.’

Hurdle was shocked. “I had never heard that term before,” he said. Gordon suggested taking those Hurdle-isms — there are 25 detailed in the book — and connecting them to his personal history. Wiley liked the idea, and Hurdle went to work last year.

”I probably wrote for nine months. I did the writing 90% of the time when I was on a plane,” he said. “I felt comfortable on a plane. I could put my ear pods in where people thought I was listening to music and I just started typing, from Tampa to Phoenix, from Tampa to Albuquerque, from Tampa to Denver or the West Coast.

Hurdle and his editors finalized the product in October. “Spell check, fact check, index, all of it,” he said.

“It was kind of like going back to school. I had deadlines I needed to meet and a word count they wanted me to honor.”

Like most writers, Hurdle pushed back on the word count. “I just want to write, see where it lands,” he said.

“It was very therapeutic, a really good learning experience at the age of 66 to walk through that.”

It reminded him of his time in baseball. “There was a lot of teamwork involved,” he said.

“I didn’t think I was going to enjoy it. I thought it was going to be work. It turned into fun. (Editors) said it after I wrote some things, ‘You write the way you talk, and that’s a good thing.’

“It was good to revisit some of those lightning bolt moments, moments of humility, moments of so much fun.”

Some of those moments include his time as a 20-yearold Sports Illustrated coverboy with the Kansas City Royals in 1978 and three World Series appearances as a player (Royals), manager (Rockies) and coach (Rangers).

Hurdle lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida and spends all his free time with wife Karla, children Ashley, Maddie and Christian and his parents. Those are the people, he writes in the book, who have made “fingerprints on (his) success.”

”I don’t know anything else,” he said of his career in baseball. “I don’t feel like I ever had to work since I’ve been involved in this game that I love. My dad loved it, and he shared his love for it with me. It was contagious.

”It provided some challenges because it’s not an easy lifestyle. A lot of sacrifices for your family and for yourself at times. I had my struggles through it. It presented a lof of different opportunities for me to make decisions. I’ve made some good ones. I’ve made some bad ones.

”My life in baseball is like the starting pitcher who gave up five (runs) in the first (inning), but the manager didn’t have anybody else so he let me pitch four innings, as long as I could go. I ended up with a good start.

“I still believe I’m finishing well.”