Torn between a last-place baseball team and a sick little girl, Rockies manager Clint Hurdle followed his heart.
He has left the ballpark, gone to keep vigil for his nearly 3-year-old daughter in the hospital.
Hurdle cannot win. The problems in his life are too big for any one man to wrap his arms around, let alone fix.
Madison Hurdle, whose short life has been one unending medical challenge, needs her father more than 25 Colorado players do.
The Rockies lost again Tuesday. The score doesn’t matter. It was just another night in a 162-game grind for a franchise whose season cannot be saved. Hurdle was not in the dugout. Nobody blinked an eye.
“What if we were in the World Series? Would the priorities be different? That’s a great question,” said Rockies president Keli McGregor, craning his neck to see if a flyball dropped for a hit against the Chicago White Sox.
“I think everybody on this team wants (Hurdle) to be with his family. When you’re standing there in that hospital, it’s very clear where a father needs to be. And that should not change, no matter the stakes.”
But a tug of war between job and family guarantees nothing except broken heartstrings.
The Rockies need stability. Their manager could use a dose of sanity.
Might it be healthier for all concerned if Hurdle put down the telephone to the Colorado clubhouse and stepped away from his job for an extended leave, allowing him to deal with a family crisis while somebody else sweats the small stuff of scribbling names on a lineup card?
In recent weeks, Hurdle has twice dropped everything at work and rushed to the bedside of a daughter born with Prader-Willi Syndrome and recently gripped by repeated epileptic seizures. He has missed eight games.
The Rockies might not be very adept at scoring runs, but they are changing the way we think about games. Sports long have clutched the anachronistic bromide that tough guys rub a little dirt on the pain and play ball, no matter what trouble happens outside the lines.
“I’ve been in this game 32 years, and I’ve heard people say the order of importance should be baseball, family, religion. C’mon. That’s the olden days. If family’s not No. 1, something’s wrong with you,” said Colorado bench coach Jamie Quirk, running the team in Hurdle’s absence.
We all should be blessed with such an understanding employer. But if Hurdle were driving a bread truck, would he be able to afford to skip deliveries? Sports have become such an addictive escape they alter reality for us all. The NFL thinks nothing of playing on Christmas, as if linebacker were a job as essential as nurse or policeman. A boss once chastised me for the poor planning of having a child born the same month as the World Series, and my only game duties involve second-guessing.
Hurdle could be back at work today. Or next week. Nobody knows for certain what magic the doctors can do for his daughter.
The Rockies have not yet felt it necessary to discuss the possibility of Hurdle taking an extended leave of absence, and McGregor stressed that would be a decision left to the manager.
While Joe Torre of the New York Yankees owns a fistful of championship rings, there is no manager in baseball with more responsibility than Hurdle, who wears his stress the way so many men do, in a mirror that ages him faster than the calendar. He is the face, the voice and the lightning rod of the Rockies.
There are critics who wish Hurdle would just go away. He considers managing the Rockies a dream job nonetheless.
The male ego is Peter Pan dusted with testosterone. A major-league clubhouse tends to crank up the arrested development as loud as that Willie Nelson country tune blaring from the sound system.
But there comes a time when every guy must put down his toys and go home.
The game has been called for Hurdle on account of compromises that test every man with too many responsibilities to possibly manage them all.
Anybody can carry the Colorado batting order to the umpire at home plate. Maddie Hurdle has only one daddy who can pray for her in the middle of the night.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
