Surrounded by family, Clint Hurdle goes back to school while embracing new life

He rises every morning around 6:30, just in time to watch the sun rise over Anna Maria Island on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

“Sunrises are pretty magnificent here,” Clint Hurdle said.

Life isn’t bad, either, for the only manager in 27 years to bring playoff baseball back to Pittsburgh.

For 36 minutes Friday, Hurdle stepped away from his new daily ritual that includes prayer, yoga and reading “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” with 17-year-old daughter Maddie.

He talked a little baseball, but the conversation mostly focused on how he has spent the past seven months at home — really at home — for the first time in 45 years.

“It’s almost like a 7-month-old puppy that’s still getting housebroken,” he said.

Hurdle, 62, has been in baseball since he was the Kansas City Royals’ first-round draft choice (ninth overall) in 1975. He hit .259 over 10 seasons and was manager or coach in the majors and minors from 1988 until last September when he was fired by the Pirates at the end of a 69-92 season.

Yet, he said, “I’m in a good place. I’m at peace.”

Thanks to the pandemic, Hurdle is home-schooling Maddie and 15-year-old son Christian, not far from his former spring training base in Bradenton.

With schools closed, Hurdle, his wife, Karla, and family helper, Alex — “She’s a lot more than a nanny,” he said – lead instruction in English, Spanish, history, physical education, music, biology and math.

“We need each other to get through this paused life,” Hurdle said.

The day begins with Hurdle sitting on the back porch for more than hour “just being quiet,” he said.

He reads, prays and “gets my thoughts together for the start of the day.” His reading material ranges from “Coach Wooden and Me” by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to “When Breath Becomes Air,” neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi’s memoirs on his battle against cancer.

After an hour of breakfast and family time — something Hurdle often missed as a manager — classes begin, first upstairs in the home gym and later in the family’s nearby second home where Hurdle said he can create more of a school environment.

“Reading Huck Finn, chapter 39, almost finished,” he declared.

Hurdle seems to especially enjoy music class. When Maddie’s assignment was to interview someone 60 years or older about their taste in music, she chose her father. (Hurdle said he has had a passion for music since buying “Meet The Beatles,” their second album, at the age of 7.)

“We sat down and put a presentation together,” he said. “We lost track of time while we were doing it. I found it as much fun as anything I’ve done in a long time.”

Those are the moments Hurdle would have missed if he had accepted the two-year contract the San Diego Padres offered to be their hitting coach this season.

“I just get back to the point that everybody was adjusting to me again,” he said. “This adjustment would have been spring training in Arizona. We’d move to San Diego. It’s as far West Coast as you can get.

“Karla and I have been married 20 years. I’ve been a husband for 10. I’ve been a father for Maddie for half of 17 and Christian half of 15. I’m gone two weeks of every month. Even in the winter, you’re gone for something.

“All the days that you’re even home, you’re not home. My wife has done nothing but make adjustments. My kids have made adjustments. It was time for me to make an adjustment.”

Still clinging to some Pittsburgh ties, the family will return this summer to put their house in Allison Park up for sale and allow Maddie and Christian to reunite with friends.

Fired with two years left on his contract, he said he doesn’t know if he will attend a game at PNC Park.

“I’m in no hurry to run back to the ballpark,” he said. “I don’t want to be a distraction.

“I’ve been fired twice. I want to honor the people who have come in to follow and give them the opportunity to do their thing without somebody being around.”

Hurdle said he has spoken to his former front office bosses Neal Huntington, Kyle Stark and Frank Coonelly and reached out to Derek Shelton when he was named the new Pirates manager.

“We’ve known each other a long time,” Hurdle said of Shelton. “I have a lot of professional and personal respect for him. I reached out to him when he got the job. I reached out to (president) Travis (Williams). I wish them nothing but good things.

“It’s kind of like running a relay race, and it’s time to give somebody else the baton or you hand the torch to somebody else.”

Hurdle is proud that he has been to three World Series with the Royals in 1980, Colorado Rockies in 2007 (as manager) and Texas Rangers in 2010. That he lost in all three is only a detail.

“There is a pretty small group of men who have been to the World Series as a player, a coach and a manager. It’s a smaller group who has lost three times,” he said, laughing.

“That fourth time was going to be a charm and my hope and my dream was for it to be in Pittsburgh. We weren’t able to pull that one off, but a lot of good things went on when we were there.”

He likes to remember how PNC Park looked and sounded during those three playoff seasons. “The ballpark’s a jewel, to see it filled and noisy and proud, it’s fantastic.”

But the games are only a part of his nine seasons there.

“One of the great things I got to watch when I was there,” he said, “I got to watch some of our players establish relationships with girlfriends, that turned into wives, that turned into families.

“I watched them grow up, physically, mentally, spiritually, professionally, personally. That’s the most rewarding aspect for me.”