Pirates Clint Hurdle Remembers Birthday of His ‘Incredible Friend’

Clint Hurdle Pittsburgh Pirates skipper

For some fortunate reason, we wound up on Pirates manager Clint Hurdles email list.  If you’re a fan of the Bucs, you probably heard about the Love Clint emails.  It’s typically a quote, a few lines of encouragement, some are sports related, some are more personal like the one he sent today.

"Please invest three minutes of your day and watch this movie. Your loss if you don’t. If you don’t have three minutes you are TOO busy !Keli McGregor’s Birthday today!RIP my incredible friend​http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_6y1CieJHo​Make a difference today.Love Clint"

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Keli McGregor was a beast of a man, a former NFL tight end for the Broncos and Colts, standing 6’8″ tall who became the Colorado Rockies President.

Hurdle was hired as the Rockies hitting coach in 1997.  McGregor was a VP.  Together they accomplished some very notable milestones.  McGregor passed away in 2010.  He was only 48 years old and died from a rare virus.

I think ESPN did a story on their relationship last year.  I remember reading that Hurdle made it a point that his emails would get kicked up a notch–all for Keli.  It’s just another layer of the onion we know as Clint Hurdle.  Damn interesting stuff.

And one can only imagine we will see a number of more interesting stories about the Bucs skipper if the team can match their 2013 success this summer.  Hurdle must have delivered one hell of a speech at McGregor’s Memorial Service, during which he said he cried for 30 minutes behind the Green Monster after finding out about his friends death.

The speech left such an impression on Colorado Sports Examiner writer Mark Knudson that he thought the Rockies might want to hire Hurdle to be McGregors’ successor.

Often times we joke about Hurdle’s game management, bullpen management, roster management, hell, you name it we poke fun.  It’s not a one way street though, you might remember Cocktails got heckled during the RumBunter podcast by the Bucs skipper for asking a question in what was viewed by Hurdle to be silly.

But there is one thing that’s not silly about Hurdle.  The guy is bright.  He’s successful and most of all he makes a difference.

Here is the video that was referenced in his email today.