Halladay showed Phils exactly what it meant to be family
PHILADELPHIA » There is no phrase trotted out around professional sports more often than the idea of a team as family. It is, of course, often branded as a standard operating cliche material, especially in times of victory and memorable joy.
It was never revealed as being so true for one of the most successful collections of players the Phillies ever put together than on Tuesday afternoon, when news of the sudden, tragic death of one of their own began to make the rounds.
Of course, the private plane crash into the Gulf of Mexico didn’t just take one of their own. Roy Halladay was and always has been one of baseball’s brightest stars, if only because his innate competitiveness coupled with quiet grace and elegance always elevated him above the fray, and even above the game in which he so excelled.
“This is his family’s loss first, the Phillies’ loss and baseball’s loss as well,” Phillies chairman David Montgomery said in a news conference at Citizens Bank Park Tuesday night. “It’s an All-Star pitcher, All-Star person and AllStar father and family man that we lost today.”
Halladay, 40, was lost when his recently purchased ICON A5 two-passenger plane plunged into the Gulf off the coast of Holiday, Fla. His wife, Brandy, and he had talked about how she was against the purchase when he first did so on a now haunting YouTube video that had been posted.
Since his premature retirement in 2013 due to chronic shoulder issues, Halladay mostly stayed away from the game while devoting himself to his wife and two sons, Braden and Ryan. But he had kept a visible presence on social media. He revealed himself as happy in retirement, fun-loving to the core, something that not always came through via his businesslike playing demeanor.
It also showed the general public just how much of a family man he was. On Sunday, Halladay’s last tweet showed a picture of the youth baseball team he helped coach in Florida, talking of how proud he was of them. Halladay’s Twitter account also showed pictures of a private plane and him apparently at the controls.
But then, that was part of his love of family, too.
“Knowing that his father was a pilot, that was right there,” Cole Hamels said Tuesday night while reminiscing about Roy. “You look Former Phillies pitcher Roy Halladay, right, died in a small plane crash in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida on Tuesday. He was 40. up to your dad, always. He had that bug, too, to want to fly. That was his passion. You have to respect that. Gosh, it’s tough to try to wrap your head around, how this really happened. But you have to know that the unexpected does (happen).
“He prepared for everything. So you have to give him the credit; he took this serious. This wasn’t something that was misplayed . ... He took things serious.”
Hamels said he valued Halladay as “a mentor,” but also as a friend. He was a young staff star coming off two World Series when Halladay marched into the Phillies’ spring training clubhouse in 2010 for the first time. Hamels immediately fell under Halladay’s natural leadership charms.
“We were predominantly a powerhouse for offense,” Hamels said. “We pitched, but that’s not what we were known for. When we got Roy, we all of a sudden kicked into gear where it was pitching. Everybody always doubted that Philadelphia would ever have a good pitching staff. But we never thought that. We always believed we could. And we did. When he came into that clubhouse, he really assured us that we could be a dominant pitching staff . ... That’s what taught me how to bring my game up to the next level.”
Hamels didn’t only listen to Halladay, follow his advice, learn from his quiet ways of setting examples. He also became a close friend of the veteran who was baseball’s most dominant pitcher from the mid-2000s through the 2011 “Four Aces” season with the Phillies. It was Halladay leading a starting staff that also included Hamels, Cliff Lee and Roy Oswalt. Oh ... and fifth starter Joe Blanton.
“Everybody labeled us as the ‘Four Aces,’” Hamels said. “But Roy came in and said, ‘No, it’s five aces. We have five guys in this rotation and they’re all aces.’ We believed it. We saw that from Roy and we believed it. That’s why it was a very, very special rotation and that’s why we still have a special connection, a family connection. “We all still talk. We still try to go on vacations together. This was the communication the past couple hours. It was between all of us. That’s why it’s so tough.”
Hamels fondly recalled a vacation with those former teammates to Australia a few years ago.
“A lot of us, we knew how much family meant to him, and we respected that he wanted to have that time with them,” Hamels said. “But about three years ago, we were all able to go on a vacation together to Australia. It was all of us. Every one of us was able to go. We spent about 16 to 20 days together. It was the best time ever.”
It will likely be how Cole Hamels best remembers his mentor and his friend. The quiet clubhouse leader who taught him that ‘a baseball family’ didn’t have to be only a cliche.
Contact Rob Parent at rparent@21st-centurymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @ReluctantSE