Remembering Keli

I’ve played fantasy baseball since around 1992, as best I can recall.  I was living in Boston, attending class and the occasional Red Sox game (not Red Sox games and the occasional class, as my parents worried), and found that my life-long devotion to the Red Sox became immediately suspect.  Not because of their on-field performance, but because of my off-field enterprises – namely, hoping the players on my fantasy team performed well, even if those performances came at the expense of the Red Sox.

Until 1993, when I became a fan of the Colorado Rockies.  A Floridian living in Boston.  A natural for a Rockies fan.

It began because I was a Keli McGregor fan, actually.  I didn’t know anyone else in the business of baseball, but I’d met Keli when he moved to Gainesville with his wife, Lori, in the late 1980s and because he was good friends with my father, who helped Keli get acclimated in Gainesville.

By the time Keli began with the Rockies in 1993 as the Senior Director of Business Operations, I wanted the team to win for no other reason other than I wanted him to be successful.

But over the years, I’d become a true Rockies fan because in the eight years since he became team president, I had watched the Rockies grow into an organization that emphasized character.  In the book that Tony Dungy and I just completed (due out this summer), we quoted the Rockies’ Mission Statement, developed by Keli:

The mission of the Colorado Rockies Baseball Club is to embody the principles and practices of a championship organization in both the sport and business of baseball.  In the rich tradition that has made baseball America’s pastime, we are committed to conduct our business with integrity, service, quality and trust.

Note there's nothing in there about winning the World Series, which they reached in 2007, or making the playoffs, which they did again in 2009.  Instead, they sought to treat their people well, and in turn, the people of the city of Denver, the state of Colorado, and beyond, with dignity and respect.

In addition to their other actions involving community – the Rockies have built over 100 Little League fields in Colorado – they viewed their very stadium as a public trust.  My dad and I went out to Denver to watch games with Keli during the 2007 season, and he pointed out the view of the outlying mountain range from the stadium seats.  As he explained it, the planning commission was set to rule on a zoning variance to allow a high-rise development that would block a significant part of that view.

I assumed that the Rockies would be opposed.  “I don’t know yet,” Keli said.  He then elaborated that the people of Denver had just become aware of the potential issue.  If they felt that development was more important for the city, fine.  If they valued the view, so be it.  As he saw it, the Rockies and the stadium existed for the community, not the other way around.  The Rockies position would be whatever was best for Denver.

Another good friend of ours was a University of Florida student and member of the golf team there, despite being born with cystic fibrosis.  At her memorial service last Fall, her father recounted the day that Mallory took a turn for the worse while in Gainesville and had to be airlifted to Denver, which has one of the leading cystic fibrosis centers in the country.  My father called Keli to let him know that Mallory was on her way.

Members of the Rockies visited Mallory weekly, as her visit stretched from days to weeks to months.  After their constant care and support, Mallory finally returned to Florida along with family members, who had traveled back and forth to be with her.  They were elated but exhausted, her father recalled.  They looked around at the hospital room, which over the months had become filled with various gifts and other items of a college girls’ life, including hundreds of stuffed animals that had been sent by well-wishers.

Keli told them just to go home and leave it all behind, and several days later it all arrived in Florida.  Members of the Rockies packed her room and shipped it at the Rockies’ expense.  

And so we were deeply saddened upon learning Tuesday that Keli had died.  We were shocked as well – Keli was 48 and in top shape:  6’7”, around 240 pounds, still looking like the professional football player that he had once been, still working out daily with Rockies’ players.

Keli had recently spoken with my dad about conducting a seminar for sports executives.  He had been a presenter at the inaugural Impact for Living Conference in Tampa in 2009, sharing thoughts on leadership and how to maximize their potential.  He told dad that he would love to get 20 sports executives in the same room for a weekend and help them understand how they should view their clubs as instruments for a greater good.

He didn’t live to see such a seminar come to pass, but we know that, as a friend prayed, “Keli had dinner with friends on Monday, and breakfast on Tuesday with You.”  Or, as another friend noted, “we ultimately live in the hope of Heaven, undeterred (and unbowed) by the challenging chapters here on earth . . . before we experience that just, true and good ‘happy ending’ of the stories of all our lives -- that day when all will be set to right.”

We will miss Keli and his daily influence, but have hopes that the qualities that he built into the Rockies will remain.

And in the meantime we press on, looking for our own examples where we might view our endeavors as a way to impact the “challenging chapters” of others’ lives for good, as did Keli.