Todd Helton hits a home run off of Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Jake Peavy at the start of action at Coors Field on Sept. 25, 2013, in Denver. The Colorado Rockies hosted the Boston Red Sox and said farewell to longtime first baseman Todd Helton, who had recently announced his retirement following the 2013 season. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
Todd Helton wasn’t born to be a Hall of Famer. It just seemed that way.
From his baby-faced days at Central High School in Knoxville, to his three years at the University of Tennessee and nearly two decades with the Colorado Rockies in LoDo, Helton was a phenom.
Yet his road to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, where he’ll be inducted next Sunday, was far from easy. He may have been a natural, but a bronze plaque in Cooperstown requires more than talent alone.
Five people — his wife, Christy, Rockies trainer Keith Dugger, hitting guru Bill Mossiello, former Rockies manager Clint Hurdle, and Knoxville Central coach Bud Bales — were among those who provided Helton with the unwavering support and tough love he needed during a 17-year career that included countless injuries, surgeries and slumps.
He beat self-doubt. He leaned on superstitions. Perhaps more than anything, he endured, totaling 2,519 hits and 369 homers over 2,247 games.
After his career ended in 2013, and Helton struggled to find his post-baseball path while battling problems with alcohol, his support system remained.
“I’m proud to say I’m four years sober,” he said last week. “I’ve had help with that.”
In October 2020, Helton fell through the floor above the garage of his Knoxville-area home and suffered an injury to his left leg that left him unable to walk for a year.
“The trauma doctor said it was the worst leg injury he’d ever seen,” Helton said.
But here he is, at 50, playing golf (he shot a 74 at Tennessee National Golf Club last week), working out and nervously finalizing his Hall of Fame speech.
“This is the biggest deal I have seen in his life, other than our girls being born,” Christy said, referring to daughters Tierney Faith and Gentry Grace. “… Watching him go through this has been amazing. He never acted like the milestones were a big deal before, he just kept going. But this, this is different.”
Here’s the story of the five people without whom “this” would never have been possible.
The Coach
At the apex of his minor league career, Bud Bales spent one spring training catching for the Cubs in 1961.
From behind the plate, he watched future Hall of Famer Ernie Banks drive the ball to the opposite field. So much so that he came to believe that was the mark of an exceptional hitter.
When he crossed paths with Helton as Knoxville Central’s baseball coach years later, Bales made it his mission to make that skill a defining part of Helton’s game.
“Todd and I worked every day to get better,” recalled the 86-year-old Bales. “We worked out in the basement of the gymnasium. We called it ‘The Hole.’ It wasn’t much, but every day, Todd would be there.”
Colorado Rockies Hall of Famer Todd Helton, left, attends a University of Tennessee regional baseball game in June with Bud Bales, his Knoxville Central High School baseball coach. (Photo courtesy of Christy Helton)
While other coaches cranked the pitch machine up to 80-85 mph, Bales took a different approach.
“I’d turn the machine up to maybe 50,” Bales said. “We worked on hitting to the opposite field. Waiting on a pitch, driving it. Todd got very good at it.”
Helton’s dad, Jerry, who died in 2015 at age 65, first taught the left-hand hitting Helton to take the ball to left field. Bales took it to the next level.
Bales has countless anecdotes of the high school Helton, but one stands out.
“We are playing in the district tournament in 1990 and Todd didn’t have a very good night at the plate,” he recalled. “He was 1 for 3, I think, which for Todd wasn’t good.
“Todd was scheduled to pitch in the next game, and he said, ‘Coach, just DH for me tomorrow. I don’t need to hit, not the way I’m swinging.’ I said, ‘Well, Todd, we’ll see what we can do about that.’ ”
The next morning, the two passed each other in the hallway.
“I said, ‘Todd, I’ve got a DH in there for you today,” Bales said. “He said, ‘Oh no, coach, let me hit.’ So Todd pitched a no-hitter that night. And he hit a home run.”
Bales coached baseball at Knoxville Central for 27 years. In 1990, Central won the TSSAA State Baseball Championship with a 31-0 record. Helton, a sophomore, hit .495 and was 9-0 with a 0.25 ERA.
“I had so many good kids, but Todd Helton was different,” said Bales, who also coached major leaguers Bubba Trammell and Steve Searcy. “… He was a top-notch student and such a hard worker. He didn’t cut corners.”
Hitting Guru
Kernels manager Bill Mosiello picks up his son, Helton, 3, for a kiss before the game against Fort Wayne Tincaps on Thursday, July 15, 2010, at Veterans Memorial Stadium in Cedar Rapids. (Photo by Liz Martin/Cedar Rapids Gazette)
Bill Mosiello anticipated the phone calls.
“I watched almost all of Todd’s games in his career and I would tell my wife, Janelle, ‘Todd’s calling tonight,’ ” Mosiello said. “If Todd was playing awesome, he’d call. If he was really having a bad time, I knew he was going to call.”
The two met when Helton was a freshman at Tennessee. Mosiello wasn’t the Volunteers’ official hitting coach, but he and Helton formed a lifelong bond.
“If I didn’t feel good at the plate, ‘Mo’ was the first person I called,” Helton said.
Mosiello is a baseball lifer, having coached for nearly four decades. He spent the last two years as Ohio State’s head coach before resigning and returning to Texas Christian to be the program’s top assistant and hitting coach.
So it’s not a little bit astonishing to hear him say, “I would rather have Todd make the Hall of Fame than me win a national championship, as crazy as that sounds.”
Helton hit at least .300 in his first 10 full seasons with the Rockies, but 2008 was his lost year. Derailed by a degenerative back condition that eventually required surgery, he played in only 83 games and hit just .264.
Helton turned to “Mo.”
On his own dime, he moved Mosiello and his family to Colorado. They lived in a rental about a mile from Helton’s Brighton home.
“We home-schooled our boys, and I helped Todd train after his back surgery,” Mosiello said. “We worked on weight lifting and got him on track.”
Helton rebounded by hitting .325 in 2009, but Mosiello says his reward was even greater.
“It was an important part of my family’s life,” he said. “I wasn’t making much money at the time as a manager in the minors. Todd did an amazing job of paying us a nice amount of money to help my family survive.
“I’ve had some tough times here and there, as you always do during a 39-year coaching career, but he and Christy were always there for me and my family.”
Mosiello and Janelle have three sons, Shane, Gehrig and Helton (named after Todd). The boys accompanied Helton to his ranch near Kersey, where he taught them to hunt and fish.
Mosiello doesn’t know anything about hunting and fishing, but he knows a lot about hitting. And he knew how to motivate Helton.
“We’d pick a different theme every season,” Mosiello said. “One year, early in his career, our theme was, ‘We’re not going to give pitchers credit anymore.’
“We’d hear other hitters say, ‘Wow, that was a great performance today, I have to tip my cap to him.’ We decided, screw that. Todd started thinking, ‘No more tipping my hat, I’m going to beat this guy.’ ”
The Confidant
Colorado Rockies manager Clint Hurdle, right, stands with first baseman Todd Helton during practice Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2007, at Fenway Park in Boston. The Rockies played the Boston Red Sox in Game 1 of the baseball World Series in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Clint Hurdle and Helton had a lot in common: A love of baseball, an affinity for the details of hitting, a white-hot competitive fire.
And the weight of great expectations.
Hurdle, at age 20, was featured on the March 1978 cover of Sports Illustrated with the headline: “This Year’s Phenom.” But Hurdle never became a star.
He partied too hard and too often during his playing days and is a recovering alcoholic. He was married twice before marrying Karla, the love of his life, in 1999. That’s when Hurdle went cold turkey.
“Todd and I have talked a lot about life and all that goes into it,” Hurdle said. “Marriage, family, the challenges of it all. Todd has been able to come to me with that. Our relationship goes far beyond baseball.”
Hurdle became the Rockies’ hitting coach in 1997, the same year Helton made his major league debut. Hurdle was promoted to manager in 2002 and led the Rockies to their only World Series in 2007.
The two men clashed from time to time — the brash Hurdle, the biggest voice in the room, Helton so serious about the game — but they bonded.
Both men now work as special assistants to general manager Bill Schmidt, developing Colorado’s minor league players.
“He makes a difference with everybody he meets,” Helton said of Hurdle, “not only in baseball but in the game of life.”
Hurdle, a Teddy Bear of outward emotions, isn’t quite sure how Helton will handle his big moment on stage at Cooperstown.
“Todd’s a lot more emotional than people think,” Hurdle said. “There’s a lot going on under the surface, things he doesn’t show a lot of people. I don’t know if he’s going to tear up, but I know I’m going to cry.”
The big brother
Colorado Rockies first baseman Todd Helton, right, jokes with head athletic trainer Keith Dugger during batting practice before a baseball game against the Boston Red Sox in Denver on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2013. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Helton wore a black leather cross around his neck for much of his career. It was a gift from his grandmother, “Na-Na.”
Cashel Dugger, son of the Rockies’ head trainer and now a catcher at UCLA, wears an identical cross. He’s had it since he was 3, toddling around the Rockies clubhouse.
“To this day, he wears that beat-up, dirty leather cross. He never takes it off,” Keith Dugger said. “He idolized Todd.”
That tells you something about the bond between “Doogie” and Helton. Doogie saw Helton’s wickedly dry sense of humor and clubhouse shenanigans.
“He’s a comedian,” Dugger said. “In the media, Todd comes off as this stern professional. But in the clubhouse or the training room, he’s the loosey-goosey guy making fun of people, getting under people’s skin and taking his shots.”
Dugger, who was with Helton for almost every step of his career, was Helton’s daily healer and psychologist.
“Being a sounding board for him was one of my better attributes,” Dugger said.
So was keeping Helton on the field. Or telling the first baseman when it was time to take a seat.
“It’s not always the most stable relationship,” Dugger laughed. “There were times I’d push his buttons and he’d push mine, but we always knew it was out of love for each other.”
It was Dugger’s job to tell Helton when enough was enough.
“The thing about Todd was, he’d take 5,000 swings, so as he started getting older, I’d say, ‘Hey man, you’re going to be worn out by game time if you keep doing this,’ ” Dugger recalled. “He’d resist, but he’d usually listen.”
Helton had over a dozen surgeries and medical procedures during his career. He was the toughest player Dugger worked with.
“His back was pretty bad and the hip was bad for a period of time,” Dugger said. “But for Todd, the little surgeries, the scopes? Those were like going to the dentist for him. He’d be like, ‘I’ll be good to go in a week.’ ”
Helton doesn’t let many people inside his inner circle, but “Doogie” will always be there.
“He trusts me,” Dugger said. “We have a very strong connection that will be there the rest of our lives. It’s like having a brother, it truly is.”
Life partner
Todd Helton kisses his wife Christy and their two daughters as the Colorado Rockies hosted the Boston Red Sox and said farewell to longtime first baseman Todd Helton, who announced his retirement following the season, on Sept. 25, 2013 at Coors Field in Denver. (Photo by John Leyba/The Denver Post)
On Jan. 23, as Helton waited for the call from the Hall of Fame, he was a nervous wreck.
“I thought he was going to throw up,” Christy Helton said.
As usual, she was her husband’s compass.
“Todd would not read anything about his chances,” Christy said. “He would basically gauge how things were going by having a nonchalant conversation with me.
“That morning, he was like, ‘Are you feeling good today?’ And I said, ‘I’m feeling good.” He was like, ‘But how good are you feeling?’ I said, ‘Very good.’ ”
The Heltons met as lab partners in a freshman biology class at Tennessee. They were married in January 2000 and quickly headed off to Rockies Fantasy Camp and then to spring training.
It was the beginning of their wild baseball ride together.
“I always say that in this life, there is never a medium,” she said. “It’s always super high, where everything is great and fantastic or it’s hard to deal with. There is not a gray. You better be ready to deal with up or down.”
When Todd was playing, he was all in, all the time. He relied on Christy for all of the non-baseball stuff.
“Todd would tell you the exact same thing that I’m telling you now,” Christy said. “I tried to do anything that I could do so that he could focus on baseball. And I did. I did literally everything.”
Oftentimes, it wasn’t easy. Her husband did not leave his job at the baseball park.
“If he was in a slump, he would be mad until he could redeem himself,” Christy said. “He just wore it and didn’t share. I think he thought that not talking about it was a blessing, but I think it would have been much easier to hear, ‘I’m just mad about this.’ I had to tiptoe around some stuff.”
When Todd retired and battled his demons, Christy was caught off guard.
“I wasn’t prepared for that,” she said. “People, told me, ‘Girl be ready.’ But I literally thought it was like reaching the finish line and I thought it would be smooth sailing. I wasn’t prepared.”
When her husband injured his leg, Christy relied on her own support group.
“My mom (JoAnne Bollman) was there for us after Todd fell through the roof,” she said. “My mom’s 82 but she would be there to change his IVs in the middle of the night. That’s just what families do. We have each others’ backs — fiercely.”
Despite some rocky times, Christy has relished their life together.
“The good times were just amazing,” she said. “The perks and the places we traveled, the places we’ve taken the girls to, I wouldn’t trade that for anything. I wouldn’t trade any of it for anything.”
Helton is in a better place now and Christy thanks God for that.
“I’m so proud of the man he became through all of that,” she said. “There are so many different ways it can go. But he’s always been an exceptional dad.”
Now, Christy says, her Hall of Fame-bound husband is in a very good place.
“When I first met Todd, the thing that I loved so much was that he was really just a 12-year-old boy who just wanted to laugh,” she said. “A lot of people don’t see that, but that’s his favorite thing. I see that again. It’s like I have my boyfriend back.”
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