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Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy has retired from the Dayton Daily News after covering the Cincinnati Reds for 37 years. Hal's blog, though, will continue to be a must-read for Reds fans. He'll share his thoughts on the team this season and will file updates from Great American Ball Park. You also can catch Hal in print every Sunday in his popular Ask Hal columnHome > Blogs > The Real McCoy | Cincinnati Reds baseball news > Archives > 2009 > October > 07
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Tracy can talk the paint off the wall
Pardon my non-objectivity, but I’m pulling for the Colorado Rockies to win it all this October for one reason and one reason only.
Jim Tracy.
Tracy is one of the many big ones the Cincinnati Reds let get away. In the early 1990s, he was manager of the Chattanooga Lookouts, Cincinnati’s Class AA Southern League affiliate. Later he was the Reds’ minor league field coordinator.
Shortly after Jim Bowden became general manager of the Reds, Tracy left the organization. A wise professional move.
TRACY WAS Colorado’s bench coach early this year and when the Rockies started the season 18-28, manager Clint Hurdle was fired and Tracy replaced him.
The Rockies were 14½ games out of first place, at the bottom of the NL West. After Tracy took over, the Rockies went 74-42 and won the NL wild card, putting neck-squeezing pressure on the Los Angeles Dodgers and nearly winning the division.
I have a Manager of the Year vote and I voted for Tracy. Who else?
THERE IS A strange parallel working here. In 2003, former Cincinnati Reds manager Jack McKeon was in the front office with the Florida Marlins. They started the season 16-22 and McKeon was asked to take over.
The Marlins went 75-49 and won the NL wild card. Then they beat the New York Yankees in the World Series and McKeon was named Manager of the Year. So we have two former Reds employees who were let go and took over dormant teams early in a season and won the Manager of the Year award. Yeah, I know, Tracy hasn’t won it yet, but if he doesn’t they should toss the trophy over the Hoover Dam and never award it again.
Tracy is a native of Hamilton, a baseball and football star. He was offered a football scholarship to Xavier, but before he could play his first down the school dropped intercollegiate football.
So Tracy went to Marietta College and became an All-American outfielder, launching his baseball career. Tracy probably thanks Xavier every day of his life for dropping football.
If there is a more personable man in the game, I never ran across him. He’ll talk to anybody at any time and if there is nobody to talk to he’ll talk to a picture on his office wall. Ask him for a drink of water and he gives you Niagara Falls.
And don’t call him Jim. All his friends call him Tracy or Trace.
Tracy’s first big-league managerial job with with the Dodgers and later managed the dead-end Pittsburgh Pirates, and if you can be an optimist managing that team you can be an optimist standing on a fault line during an earthquake. Tracy always thought the Pirates were going to win.
ONE SPRING DAY during spring training, the Reds were playing the Pirates in Bradenton, Fla. I walked up to the batting cage, just to say hello. A half an hour later Tracy was still talking to me while his team took batting practice and most of it was not about baseball.
Oh, he did predict his Pirates would win the division. They finished last.
When the Rockies came to Cincinnati this year, he had a press conference in the dugout. When it was over he asked me to stay, even though it was a busy day. The Rockies had just acquired pitcher Joe Beimel and Tracy was awaiting his arrival and working on revamping his bullpen.
But he chatted with me for a long time, once again mostly non-baseball stuff.
Tracy is close friends with former Reds pitching coach Don Gullett and former Reds coach Jim Lett. During the winter, the three go deer hunting and Tracy loves to tell deer-hunting stories.
IT WOULD NOT surprise me next year if Gullett becomes Tracy’s pitching coach and Lett becomes one of his coaches. Lett was a coach for Tracy when he managed Pittsburgh and also when he managed the Los Angeles Dodgers. And Gullett wants to get back into the game.
So, pardon me, but go Rox. It’s personal.
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