The two sides of Bud Black are propelling the Rockies to never-before-seen heights

DENVER – It’s May 11, the Rockies are 22-13 and getting ready to face the Dodgers. The team is looking to move to 10 games over .500 for the first time since September of 2010.

First-year manager Bud Black emerges from the tunnel to meet with the media.

“I’ve been really tryin’, baby,” he says, half talking, half singing. “Tryin’ to hold back this feeling for so long…”

“And if you feel like I feel, baby,” he continues, now clearly belting the sounds of Marvin Gaye and awkwardly joined by the off-pitch media.

“Come on, ohhh, come on,” he stops just before the chorus.

“Senzatela, what’re you looking at? Marquez, what’re you looking at?”

Before you know it, he’s back to business.

“Talk to me,” he tells the media with a straight face, never quite making it to the best part of the song.

He likes to say “that’s baseball,” they like to say “that’s Bud Black.”

He’s quirky, he’s clever, he’s snarky and he’s unapologetic. He plays first base during batting practice, and he’s “an optimist by nature.” When asked about whether curveballs move differently at Coors Field, he says, “If you throw ’em wrong they move right over the fence.”

Like most new Colorado residents, Harry Ralston “Bud” Black Jr. is a California transplant. His slick gray hair, cool-guy nickname, surfer’s attitude and whacky catch phrases are more akin to a grown-up Spicoli than a big-league skipper. He was born in California, graduated from San Diego State, spent multiple years of his playing career in San Francisco, began his coaching career in Anaheim and made his name as a manager back in San Deigo.

Unlike most of those converted Californians, though, nobody is complaining about Bud. Why? Well, he has this state’s summertime sweetheart playing like they’ve never played before, and having fun while doing it.

“It started in Spring Training,” said prized offseason acquisition, Ian Desmond. “I don’t know if you guys heard, but he had all of these games and things like that. Whether it was Freeland having to talk about the Monfort Meat Company or the bow-and-arrow contest, there was a ton of them. I think he really lightened everybody up, showed that we can have fun and work hard, but we’re gonna do it the right way. I think that’s what you’re seeing on the field; people are probably a little bit more loose this year than they have in the past.”

“He just says random comments that are funny,” added Tony Wolters. “He’ll yell some things to the other team, and it just pumps us up, it kind of lightens the mood a little bit, it makes us relax and have fun, that’s the most important thing in this game is having fun… That’s what baseball is all about, it’s a kid’s game and we’re having fun doing it.”

Bud Black has the Rockies having fun and playing loose, but don’t you dare get that confused with some sort of lax attitude.

“I don’t want to say relaxed,” Desmond explained quickly. “That’s not the direction I would go.”

“We’re not laid back,” Wolters added. “If you see all of our guys, there’s not a lot of guys (sitting around) in the clubhouse; everyone is constantly working. I think Bud brings that to the team; he expects us to do our job, we can’t let him down. We expect to win every night; we expect to prepare to win every night.”

This is the side of Bud Black that doesn’t make the broadcast or the podcast; it’s not in the quotes or the notes. The side we don’t see may just be the side of Black that has the Rockies back in the black.

“He’s intense,” Wolters explained, quickly flipping the script on an originally fun-focused line of questioning. “He’s one of those guys where if you make a mistake it’s like you’re letting your dad down, it’s a deeper feeling for you, you don’t want to let him down. He brings really good energy to the team, super intense.”

“It’s like letting your dad down.”

Read that quote twice because it’s that important.

A former professional athlete once told me the biggest difference between good and bad coaches had nothing to do with scheme or strategy. The difference was that great coaches had the ability to get guys to dig deeper within themselves in order to make them proud, a way of inspiring his men to keep going when all seems lost.

Above all, Bud Black has his Colorado Rockies believing in him.

“I played for Tony La Russa at the beginning of my career, and he felt like the boss,” explained relief pitcher Adam Ottavino. “I feel like Buddy is like that, too. He definitely feels like the boss. He knows what to do, he’s going to push the right buttons. Everybody has a lot of faith in him, there’s no second guessing what he’s doing, we’re just trying to be soldiers for him and his scheme.”

“We don’t have too many meetings, we don’t really talk all that much as a group, honestly,” he added. “But, individually, he’s great at communicating with every guy.”

It’s Black’s levity that makes his sternness all the more digestible, it’s his sternness that makes his levity all the more relieving. Each playing off the other and leading his player’s to simply say, “He’s a really good manager.”

Buddy is a different breed, one we haven’t seen in Colorado, and his team is playing a brand of baseball that follows suit.

As of Sunday, Colorado is 58-42 on the season, it’s the best 100-game start in club history. They’ve won six of their last seven and averaged more than 40,000 fans per game over their most recent six-game homestand. The team holds a one-game lead on the Arizona Diamondbacks for the first wild card spot in the National League and they are 5.5 games ahead of the Chicago Cubs for the second spot.

The Rockies have already reached highs not seen in the franchise’s 25 years, but if Black has things his way, his team will fall in line with his rendition of Marvin Gaye’s masterpiece, the best yet to come.

Come October, though, “Let’s get it on.”