HOW HELTON, MR. ROCKIE, BECAME COOPERSTOWN’S BADDEST DUDE
Before the thunder, Todd Helton ate lightning. Five fingers at a time.
“He would jab his finger into my gut, hard,” longtime Rockies trainer and Helton confidant Keith Dugger recalled with a laugh Tuesday, just before the Colorado icon saw his overdue ticket punched to baseball’s Hall of Fame. “And I would slap him on the side of the face.”
Like many great hitters, Mr. Rockie was a notorious creature of habit — “If he ate at Arby’s the day of a good (game), I promise you, he was going to eat Arby’s the next day, and the next 15 days,” Dugger chuckled — and a slave to superstition.
Dugger was Mighty Mick to Helton’s Rocky Balboa, right down to the bruises. And most of them came, funny enough, in the summer of 2000, at the apex of a Hall of Fame career, when the Rockies’ first baseman was chasing .400. That’s when Dugger — “Doogie” to his pals — and Helton got into a pregame routine that became one-third Italian Stallion and two-thirds Three Stooges.
Dugger would tape Helton’s left wrist. Helton would poke him hard in the belly. Doogie would slap the crap out of Helton’s left cheek.
Right wrist. Another poke. Another slap. This time on the right cheek.
Here’s the thing: No. 17 kept raking. And raking. And raking. So Helton kept on poking. And poking. And poking. Dugger kept slapping. And slapping. And slapping.
“After about three weeks, my wife is like, ‘What’s wrong with you? You’ve got some kind of disease, these blue dots all over you.’” the trainer recalled.
“And I looked around and I have these little dots, bruises from Todd jabbing me in my back and my gut.
“This was kind of like, ‘Let’s (help) you get motivated for the game before he goes out there.’ But once he started getting welts under the right eye, I’m thinking, ‘We have to break this superstition.’”
Helton eventually went into a funk, and it was back to Arby’s.
“I don’t think he even felt pain, really,” Dugger said. “When he felt pain was when he couldn’t function … for me it was all about (his) mindset. I think he was probably brought up with that toughness.”
Pete Rose famously quipped that he’d walk though Hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball. When Mr. Rockie didn’t limp through Hades, he’d crawl, dogged by a bad back, torn ligaments, a trick knee and a bum hip.
Without that toughness, there’s no Hall of Fame ticket, no Hall of Fame debate, no 2,247 regular-season games, no 2,519 hits and 369 home runs over 17 seasons.
“I’ve been fortunate to be around a few Hall of Famers,” Dugger recounted, “and they all have kind of same intangibles, as if they were driven by themselves. …
“The Tony Gwynns of the world — I was around Fred McGriff and Larry Walker. … They knew what they needed from themselves to be the best. And all of them were a little bit different. For him, it was being tough, not being weak, not letting opposition know he was weak.
“And he couldn’t stand pitchers. You had the guys at the tail end of their careers, like a Greg Maddux or a Randy Johnson, and he wanted to crush them. He didn’t want to just go out there and compete. He wanted to show, ‘Man, I’m better than you.’”
With scant few he was.
The Knoxville, Tenn., native proved a good enough collegiate quarterback to land ahead of a freshman named Peyton Manning on the Tennessee Vols’ depth chart back in 1994. Ironically, it was Helton’s Wally Pipp moment — Mr. Rockie got dinged up against Mississippi State in the season’s fourth game — that helped open the door for PFM’s Hall of Fame journey on the gridiron.
Sure, the Toddfather was a monster at altitude — 227 of his 369 caexceptions,
at Boston, including a pair of clutch baskets essential in ending the Celtics’ 27game, 10-month home winning streak. He received soaring ovations and a startling “M-V-P” chant from opposing fans in D.C.
And he did it again Tuesday, cementing a 31-point triple-double with a dagger 3-pointer in Indiana. The shot clock buzzer-beater materialized out of Jokic’s scorching-hot two-man game with Jamal Murray and gave the Nuggets a 114109 lead with 4.7 seconds left. Earlier this month, Orlando also blitzed Murray out of Jokic’s ball screen when Denver had the last shot in a one-possession game. The play went awry that time.
“I think we just keep evolving our reads and our counters,” Murray said. “It’s just fun to have a partner like that to be able to play with, where he’s so unselfish. That’s the best way for me to put it. He’s just playing the game, and whatever happens, happens. There’s a lot of teams in the NBA that don’t have that. I’m blessed to be here, to play with him and play for a guy like that my whole career.”
In Denver’s three consecutive road wins, the duo is averaging 64 points, 19.3 rebounds and 15.3 assists combined — on 58.1% shooting from the field and 43.8% shooting from three.
“We are making shots. It’s easier when you make shots,” Jokic said. “Whoever (it is). Me or whoever, you know? Just as a team, when you’re making shots, the whole team gains confidence and wants to shoot when they’re open. And that’s really hard to guard.”
In road environments like Boston and Indianapolis, where two high-powered offenses thrive, the confidence Jokic identified was also able to translate toward championship-caliber containment. The Celtics have the No. 1 home offensive rating in the league. They scored 100 against Denver, their fewest points at TD Garden this season. The Pacers are close behind with the No. 2 home offense. The Nuggets held them to 109, their third-lowest total at home.
Indiana is the team with the most accurate name in the NBA. But Denver outpaced the Pacers twice in as many weeks. Fast break points were 18-4 this time, spoiling Pascal Siakam’s home debut.
“The first half was bad. The second half, just the effort of not celebrating,” Jokic said, laughing. “Just, when you score, sprint back. Set our defense. I think when we set our defense, our defense is really good.”
As he spoke in the visiting locker room at Gainbridge Fieldhouse late Tuesday, four different Nuggets players had just pulled out their phones individually to watch the end of another game on NBA League Pass. It had personal implications. The Thunder escaped an upset from Portland. The night was over, and the Western Conference standings had settled into a tidy three-way tie at the top. OKC, Denver and Minnesota. Jokic was practically the only player not watching on his phone.
“It’s too early right now. I mean, I would watch a game, but I would not watch (the standings),” he said.
Whether or not he cares yet, Denver has caught up with the other two teams largely thanks to Jokic’s efficient dominance in the last three road games.
As he carried the Nuggets to first place, he was carrying something new with him: the responsibility of honoring his teacher.
“I love him,” Jokic said in his brief comments about Milojevic. For an athlete so private and intent on concealing emotions, saying that was enough.