Trip certainly understood the hard work part. As the team’s Clubhouse Manager, one of his most important tasks was to make sure the Indians had clean uniforms. As baseball players are a notoriously dirty bunch, his was no easy job, and while Josh’s work still permitted him to have some amount of night each time he left, Trip stayed well into the next morning. He’d then catch a few hours of sleep at home before rushing back to the stadium to ready things for the next game.
Trip’s job was only slightly more glamorous, though, because with his came access to the players, several of whom would become major leaguers. He also knew the coaches. And he knew the people in the front office.
To Trip, the walking away part was not acceptable.
“You go in there and meet with them,” Trip told his brother on the empty concourse behind the grandstand, as the last of the night’s fans made their way to the parking lot. “You sit down and tell them why you’re leaving. You don’t just quit and walk away. You NEVER, EVER burn a bridge.”
That no one achieves success alone and that connections matter are hardly groundbreaking ideas. To grown-ups, that is.
Trip Durham was just a twenty-year-old college student.