The upcoming Red Sox road trip will take Chad Tracy to familiar stomping grounds: Colorado’s Coors Field, where his father managed the Rockies from 2009-12.
“Obviously my dad spent four years there, and I’ve watched a lot of games in that ballpark,” the Red Sox interim manager said Thursday morning. “There’s a lot of different ballparks … I go to that’ll bring some type of memories for me, whether it’s being a kid, like in college, and I’m playing catch with my dad or whatever on that field. So, Dodger Stadium would be another one.”
Jim Tracy’s first managerial job was with the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2001-05 (where he managed a young infielder named Alex Cora). He then managed the 2006-07 Pittsburgh Pirates before signing on to serve as Colorado’s bench coach in November 2008.
The elder Tracy’s Rockies tenure somewhat mirrored his son’s current situation with the Red Sox. The club fired Clint Hurdle at the end of May 2009, and replaced him with the Jim Tracy; the Red Sox fired Cora at the end of April this year, and brought Chad Tracy from Triple-A Worcester, where he managed since the start of 2021, up to Boston in an interim capacity.
“The initial few days, we had quite a few conversations around that,” the younger Tracy said in mid-May, when discussing the differences between his and his father’s in-season promotions. “In Colorado in ’09, taking over a team, he had just gotten to that organization that year. So his familiarity with the organization was different than what mine is here after five years here. But common points are, stabilizing, being a rock for the team, calming the group in a time of (turmoil), those types of things.”
The ’09 Rockies went 74-42 and reached the postseason under the elder Tracy that year, but lost to the Philadelphia Phillies in the NLDS (3-1). The Rockies signed him to a three-year contract extension that November, and a subsequent “indefinite” extension following the 2011 season, but he resigned at the end of the 2012 season.
Colorado Rockies’ Chad Tracy makes a catch during a spring training baseball workout, Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
The younger Tracy played in the Texas Rangers’ minor league system for most of the elder’s managerial tenure, but father and son overlapped for the 2012 season when Colorado acquired the younger Tracy from Texas in a preseason trade for right-hander Greg Reynolds.
“There’s certain places that evoke more emotion when you walk in there, like, ‘Man, I’ve been to a lot of games in this ballpark,’ ” the younger Tracy said. “It’s a pretty place, too. Beautiful ballpark.”