The Beatles and the Bucs

Clint Hurdle

Even if you hate sports, you need to know that something happened in Pittsburgh last week that hadn’t happen for twenty-one years! The Pittsburgh Pirates made the major league playoffs. It is quite amazing that one on the most pitiful and losing franchises has had such a dramatic turnaround.  
 

Clint Hurdle

There are lots of reasons for the renaissance of the team. Good players always help. Yet most insiders credit the manager, Clint Hurdle. He knows baseball inside and out, but more importantly, he understands people and life, and is a master motivator. He was accepted at Harvard on his academics, but instead choose to play baseball. At one time he struggled with staying sober, so he went to AA and started to read and take his Bible seriously.  It turned his life around.

As the “Skipper of the Pirates” he sends daily inspirational and encouraging text messages on his smartphone to his players. Often he quotes Shakespeare or the Beatles.  They love him for it.  As he once said, “They never care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

 Here is a quote from John Lennon that Hurdle has framed on the wall in his office at PNC park:  

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life.  When I went to school they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I wrote down, “happy.” 
They told me I didn’t understand the assignment. 
And I told them they didn’t understand life.

P.S. I’m pulling for my Pirates. Even if they get clobbered by St. Louise in the division playoffs, they at least made it out of the basement. Go Bucs.