With drizzle falling on his shoulders, Rockies manager Clint Hurdle slowly walked to the mound on a dreary Sunday afternoon, looking for answers that could save his team from defeat.
He got nothing except wet.
Despite making all the right moves, going by the same book read by Earl Weaver, Casey Stengel and a century of managers before him, Hurdle watched the Rockies lose 8-5 to the Arizona Diamondbacks in the last game before the midseason break.
“I’m going fishing,” Hurdle said.
For all these years and through almost 400 losses, Colorado has paid Hurdle to draw a smiley face on the bad times, offer a firm handshake to loyal fans and give counsel to prospects hoping to be major-league stars when they grow up.
But, for the first time since Hurdle became the face, the voice and the reason to keep on truckin’ for a woebegone baseball franchise, the Rockies are paying him to do something new.
Win.
The calendar says July, and the happy surprise is it’s still baseball season in Colorado.
Now, after more than four years on the job, Hurdle must prove he knows how to manage the pressures inherent to a pennant race.
“I haven’t been in this position before as a manager. I’m looking forward to it,” said Hurdle, finding a soft spot on his office sofa to cushion the hard reality of a three-game losing streak that left his team with a 44-43 record.
The Rockies broke for the All-Star Game in the funk of a lost weekend, when their stellar closer got shelled, brave rallies fell short and they were swept by Arizona.
“Nobody’s going to panic,” Rockies relief pitcher Ray King said.
Colorado, where baseball patience has been preached until most of the congregation fell asleep, finally walks, talks and occasionally even pitches like a bona fide contender in the National League West, where 85 victories probably would punch a team’s ticket to the playoffs.
Sure, the Rockies can fret about as many challenges as most of their division rivals, from a slumping bullpen to that “Help Wanted” sign hung in center field to starting pitchers Jason Jennings and Aaron Cook, who throw like aces but cannot seem to win the close ones.
Colorado, however, faces no bigger unknown than how its manager will react in the clutch.
Any bleacher bum could make a double-switch while drinking a beer. The true measure of a manager is how he superintends the emotions in a clubhouse that can have 25 different reactions to the highs and lows of a pennant race.
“It’s how you deal with the fallout,” Hurdle said. “It’s going to be critical.”
Since taking the helm of a franchise with no expectations and even less hope in April 2002, Hurdle has been given a free pass.
Of course, it was difficult, if not pointless, to question the moves of the manager for a team that refused to keep score for years.
I’m not saying it has been easy being Hurdle, who admitted shopping for groceries under cover of darkness, to avoid complainers who put the squeeze on him in the produce section.
But Hurdle has received far less heat for failure than his coaching peers in a town that demands championships from the Avalanche and Broncos. Heck, even the downtrodden Nuggets will pink-slip a coach quicker than you can spell Jeff Bzdelik.
The blessing of this edition of the Rockies is also the first stern test for Hurdle. Generation R grew up faster than anybody expected.
For a franchise that has not won anything since it opened for business in 1993, it sounds foolish to suggest the Rox are ahead of schedule.
In a division so ripe for the taking, why wait ’til next year again?
Does San Diego manager Bruce Bochy or San Francisco skipper Felipe Alou really have substantially more pieces to work with than Hurdle?
For too long, Hurdle was a jack-of-all-trades. He babysat can-miss prospects; he smiled sincerely for a million snapshots; he kept the sanity of a franchise that drove this city crazy with disappointment.
Thanks for everything.
But, starting today, there should be only two criteria to measure Hurdle as a manager.
Wins. And losses.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
