Clint Hurdle Handle Quotations

I told my guys in the meeting today, man, it's like a snake. If somebody tells me it's dead, I'm going to run over it three times before I believe it. You tell me he's not swinging the bat good, I'll believe it when he's left here and we've been able to handle him.

You'd think if you handled him, your chances of winning are better. We were able to handle him. We weren't able to handle some of the other guys.

I thought he handled a couple of challenges very well. I thought his first 10 pitches were up a bit, and then I thought he got pretty good command of the strike zone down.

We might not have any rookies next year, or maybe one or two. We've had the young players we wanted to look at this year show us they can handle the challenge.

As far as production goes, it's at the bottom of his baseball card. But as far as leadership and the way he's rallied the team, it's at the top. This year has challenged him in a lot of different areas, made him stretch and grow in a lot of places and I think he has handled it well.

We bit off a little more than we could chew. But they proved they could handle it.

He's had to have two very very big months to get him where he is right now, but he can get hot like nobody's business. He's probably learned some very valuable lessons through this year. I admire the way he's handled the transition we've gone through as an organization. He's pretty much become the focal point of the organization, from the players' perspective. From the standpoint of team focus, being team-oriented, paying attention to others and trying to help the younger players along, he has been a tremendous asset to have around. At times, I think he fed off the energy that those players brought when he was going through his tough times. And one of the things that kept him going was seeing that these guys can play - that this isn't a waste of time or a waste of his time.

Nothing provides an opportunity for growth more than adversity. They can handle it one of two ways: they can deal with it, become better from it, work through it. They can feel sorry for themselves and make a bad situation worse. So, it's all part of growing up and I expect them to handle it very professionally.

Numbers speaking, he made one error the whole time he was at shortstop, which speaks volumes. He handled himself remarkably well. He showed major-league poise.