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Q&A: Paul Egins Director, Major League Operations

One of the few "original hires" still with the organization, Paul Egins has been a trainer, a scout, a personnel man and a travel guru - sometimes all at once. Currently, Egins handles all of the Club's travels. His gregarious personality can make even the worst day of the season seem like a joy. A Georgia native, he got his start in the game when the legendary Henry Aaron called and offered him a job in the Atlanta Braves organization. He worked for Atlanta for four years prior to joining the Rockies in 1991, has a bachelors degree from the University of Georgia and a master's degree from Florida A&M University. Recently, Rockies Magazine had a chance to sit down with the travelin' man.

By Paul Swydan

Does watching every game give you a unique perspective on the action?

Paul Egins: Yes, I have to temper myself, I can't get too high or low. I am up at two and three a.m. with these guys, I have to maintain a good outlook. You have to love baseball and you have to stay on an even keel. For instance, sometimes (Executive Vice President and General Manager) Dan (O'Dowd) will call during the middle of a game and I will have to start balancing keeping score with making travel arrangements in the middle of the game, like when Troy Tulowitzki got hurt and we had to set to work getting Omar Quintanilla and Jonathan Herrera out to San Francisco, and book Tulo a flight home as well.

What are some of your job responsibilities?

Egins: In Spring Training, my responsibilities are literally everything - housing, meals and cars for everybody that comes to Spring Training. During the season, I am responsible for much of the same, meal money, itineraries, scoring games. Sometimes now I will defer scoring to the PR department on getaway days, but I like to do it myself.

Everyone in the Rockies traveling party minus the broadcasters gets meal money on road trips and once we reach cruising altitude on the plane, I will hand that out. I also have to make sure I have enough cash on hand to tip our drivers and bellhops. Also, players on rehab assignments get meal money, and I have to take care of their travel as well. So right now I have to mail out meal money for Luis Vizcaino and Jason Hirsh down in Tucson, and get them rental cars and hotel rooms as well. Also, during home games I have to lay out tickets for the visiting team's players and coaches.

How stressful are the days when the team must pack up and head out to another city?

Egins: Very. Sometimes a player will get hurt on a getaway day, but otherwise I've got the routine down pretty good. Once, about four or five years ago I had a stress fracture in my foot and I was on crutches. As a result, I had mixed some things around and had the meal money in a different bag than I normally would have. As we were getting on the plane, I had my crutches and my two normal bags, and I got on the plane. Once on the plane, I started to check through my bags for everything I needed on the flight, and realized the meal money was not there. I had left it in a duffel bag on top of one of the cars in the parking lot. Meal money for the whole trip, more than $30,000! Luckily, Brad Andress - who is usually the last one on the plane - ran out to the car and was able to grab it for me. I would have been in a lot of trouble had I lost that money!

Do you have contingency plans in place for unexpected events like weather, traffic or extra-inning games?

Egins: Well, our itineraries for the bus and plane are constantly in flux. We have our own charter plane, so we are responsible for the flight manifest, which details every person that will be on the plane and the time you plan to leave. I will talk to the flight scheduler and pilot during the game, they will keep me informed of the weather and I will keep them abreast of what is going on in the game. Weather is constantly on our mind, we have to be conscientious, but we have really only had one incident where we had trouble taking off out of DIA. In the days before we had our own plane, there were a couple of instances, once heading out of Phoenix and once out of Atlanta, where I had to wheel and deal and get another plane for us if games went late or planes got hung up because of weather, but I haven't had to do that in six or seven years. So I'm constantly on the phone, I sign contracts for a lot of stuff, even the catering on the plane, which I have to pay special attention to now that I am diabetic. But I want to make sure we're eating right in general, and every now and then we will do a little something special or one of the guys will have a request.

Take us through your mindset during the 22-inning game, which was also a getaway day, as the team had to travel to Houston right after the game.

Egins: It was crazy. I usually will call the pilot in the ninth inning and let him know to get ready because the game just ended. We have two buses that leave for the airport on getaway days, a half hour bus and an hour bus, meaning a half hour and hour after the game ends. We do that to avoid logjams during the screening process. Anyway, that night, I called the pilot in the ninth inning...and then the 15th inning...and then the 18th inning. We had to keep pushing everything back. To complicate matters, we generally fly out of the Navy base over on Coronado Island rather than the San Diego airport. Before that trip we had pushed for a special exception to fly out of the San Diego airport. Well, their airport closes at midnight because of the noise the planes make when they fly over downtown, and you have to pay a fine for flying out of there after that point. Well, we didn't take off until two in the morning. We ran the numbers and decided it would cost just as much to fly the plane over to Coronado Island as it would to just fly out of San Diego and pay the fine. I believe the fine was $3,000 for each hour after midnight, but I believe they were gracious enough to just charge us for the first hour.

So we get into Houston at 7 a.m. Houston-time, and the poor truck company had been there for six hours already. The bellmen too, waiting for six hours, because they have to be there when we arrive, 1 a.m. - 7 a.m. Normally, when we leave the Houston airport, it's 20 minutes to the hotel. The kicker of the whole trip was that, since we didn't get out of there until 7:30 or so, we ended up being stuck in rush hour traffic! We were on the bus for close to 75 minutes, and didn't arrive at the hotel until 8:45. We had to be back on the bus at 4 p.m. for our game that night with the Astros. Of course, wouldn't you know, we went out that night and won big, so it all worked out in the end.

From the start of Spring Training until the end of the season, how many off-days do you get?

Egins: Just the off-days the team has, plus the three-day All-Star break. I won't come in on my off-days unless there is something really pressing. I will golf or get my house in order - as a single guy it's tough for me to do that! My whole life revolves around the next trip, so home gets left by the wayside sometimes. The mindset is not tough. You miss some things, family reunions, etc. but I have taken the opposite approach now. Now I understand the value of two days off and just how important each day is.

How many days per year are you on the road?

Egins: I would say around 86 days during the regular season, with another 45 for Spring Training, plus another week for the Winter Meetings, so about 138-140 days altogether.

You have always been a staunch advocate of getting young African-Americans into the baseball industry. What is your message to young members of the African-American community when you have a chance to speak to them?

Egins: Just that there are options. When I was growing up I thought the only way to be with a pro team was to be an athlete. But there is a lot more - working in the clubhouse, in the front office, in ticketing, in finance, etc. You can work in the front office and still enjoy the benefits of being within the game, which is another misconception. I thought you had to be a player or a batboy, and you don't have to be. I also tell kids to strive for education. Stay in school, go to college. I loved college.

What is your favorite city to visit overall?

Egins: Probably San Francisco. I would say Chicago, New York and Atlanta as well, but we go to San Francisco so often that I have come to know the city real well. It's easier for me, and it's a great city to begin with.

How did last year compare to when your hometown Braves made it to the 1991 World Series in your final year in the Braves organization?

Egins: Well, until last year, 1991 was the best for me. When we made the Wild Card in 1995 that compared more to last year for me, being that they were both here. But 2007 far exceeded the experience of 1995, obviously. But in comparing to 1991, I mean, the experience paralleled that, but I have been here for 16 years. I have been here literally since day one. I was only with Atlanta for a few years, so I would have to say that now 2007 is my 1A and 1991 is my 1B. But they were both tremendous experiences.

You were involved in the tiebreaker coin tosses last year, for what became one of the most important games in Rockies, if not Denver sports history. Tell us about that, the magnitude of that?

Egins: I was just walking down the hall by Dan's office, and he was on the conference call. He yelled out to me, 'Egs, do you feel like a lucky guy?" I answered yes, and he told me to call them. This was three weeks to a month before any of the scenarios would unfold, but we got six out of the seven tosses that we wanted. Obviously, the rest is history. That was just a great game.

You are a noted Georgia Bulldog fan. Obviously they have a natural rivalry with Todd Helton's Tennessee Volunteers, but who else do you find yourself in friendly rivalries with as college sports seasons unfold?

Egins: Ha ha, go Bulldogs, 'sic em! Obviously, with Todd there is Tennessee, and I'm not too happy with him since they beat us the last two years. But more than rivalries, I've got some of the other guys interested in the Bulldogs and SEC football. Tulo is a Bulldogs fan now, and a bunch of the guys and I have a fantasy football league for college football that we do in the offseason.

You are in charge of player ticket requests. How many player ticket envelopes do you fill out in a season? Is one city more popular than others among the players?

Egins: Oh, the Cubs by far, which coincidentally is the hardest ballpark for me to get tickets for. We get 200-210 tickets as a team per game, and when we are in Chicago we use them all!




The Eyes Have It

By Vanessa Hughes

In addition to vision correction and protection, there are eye exercises players can do to enhance their vision and focus. That was news to Matt Holliday until he spent a day at Nike Headquarters in Oregon a couple off-seasons ago. The Rockies All-Star went through a bevy of eye tests involving tracking moving objects, reading letters rapidly from a flip chart and wearing goggles that make your eyes blurry then sharp to help you pick things up quickly. "The thing is, you can improve your eyesight by doing exercises. I was surprised by that," says Holliday. "I just figured you got what you got."

Holliday says he hasn't done much with the eye exercises since then, but admits he should make it a priority. "Playing this game your eyes are extremely important and anything you can do to improve your eyesight, like those exercises, I probably should be doing more to keep my eyes sharp."

Torrealba has gone so far as to work with the Conditioned Ocular Enhancement training system (more commonly known in clubhouses as the "tennis ball machine"), which helps batters visually track balls.

Here's how it works: The hitter sets up about 60 feet away from the machine in his normal stance. The machine starts shooting tennis balls at about 90 mph, then increases to 120 mph with different speeds mixed in. Each ball is marked with numbers one through nine, in red or black ink. The drill is designed to help the hitter focus on the numbers and colors rather than on his mechanics. Once the ball comes back in at 85-90 mph, it seems slower and larger to the hitter.

Torrealba did the training a couple offseasons ago in his native Venezuela and says he had a good spring training that year. Like Holliday, he too has put vision training on the back burner. "Players these days just worry about working out, being strong and having muscles but you need to do some exercises for your eyes (too). Your eyes are probably the main thing in your job." He also says it would be in his best interest to revisit the vision training. Keep in mind, not only must Torrealba see the ball clearly at the plate, but he's catching in the neighborhood of 200 pitches a night and needs to be able to track the ball behind the plate too.

While a select few Rockies players are gradually picking up on the benefits of vision training, Mets All-Stars Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes don't need convincing. Beltran became hooked on the tennis ball machine during Spring Training in 2004 with the Royals. And, when Beltran joined the Mets in 2005, he insisted that a clause be included in his $119 million dollar contract that the team must provide the machine and a trainer to go with it. Beltran and Reyes both say the vision training is a huge part of their routine. "The vision is going to become a lot clearer for you," says Reyes. "You're going to step into the batter's box and it's like a different feeling with your eyes. It helps me recognize pitches more and swing at better pitches."

Meanwhile, Harrison offers a very successful vision training program called "Slow The Game Down," where he teaches players how to use their eyes to literally slow the ball down. He feels that if players can become more visual they can improve their mechanics and technique at the plate. He's worked with several teams including the Atlanta Braves, Washington Nationals and Cincinnati Reds and dozens of individual players including ex-Rockies infielder Jamey Carroll, as well as Jason Giambi, Mike Sweeney, Sean Casey and Carlos Quentin, just to name a few.

We've all heard the saying, "The eyes are the windows to the soul." For ballplayers, the eyes, if properly cared for, can also open the door to success on the diamond.



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