FWSSR 2021 Summer Newsletter

The Major Leagues It appears the swing of a calf rope can go a long way in training an arm to pitch for the major leagues. Taylor Hearn is the playbook example. The grandson of Cowboys of Color Rodeo founder Cleo Hearn broke from the roping chute after a successful high school rodeo career to the ranks of professional baseball. It was a journey fraught with the irony of a chance to do well in both rodeo and professional baseball, with baseball winning out in the end. Hearn’s single mindedness for success could be considered hereditary. Grandfather Cleo is a rodeo legend, in and out of the African American community, as he worked to bridge a racial gap in rodeo and helped carve out a specific niche with the Cowboys of Color Rodeo which Cleo produces in Oklahoma and North Texas including during the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo. Taylor was much the same, as he was able to balance both the rodeo life and competing in baseball while attending Royce City High School. Tie- down ropers are no strangers to the lightning speed needed to catch and tie in less than 8 seconds to earn a paycheck at most of the major rodeos. Taylor’s skill in both arenas was noted most prominently due to his scorching fastball and shattering sliders, but reality had to sink in. “My dad was blatantly honest,” Taylor told the Pro Rodeo Sports News recently. “He said I’m not going to be able to make a living in rodeo and being on the road, but he wasn’t deciding for me. He said he’d support me either way, but I knew he was right. It was about me making the decision that would be better for me long term, so I took my chance at baseball and started to look at rodeo as more of a hobby.” Still, he held off professional baseball and decided to go on to college despite three attempts by professional clubs – Pittsburg, Cincinnati and Minnesota – to bring him into the fold. His focus on college might have been a bit of an homage to his iconic grandfather, the first African American cowboy to attend college on a rodeo scholarship. Taylor finally signed with Washington Nationals in 2015 but came back to his home turf in 2018 when he agreed to pitch for the Texas Rangers, and made the roster to pitch Opening Day in 2021 at just 26. “I think rodeo has made a pretty big impact on my baseball career, for sure,” Hearn shared with the Sports News. “For one, there’s the grit. Then there’s patience, and that’s probably the biggest thing. In baseball, you’re going to fail a lot. The experiences I had in failure in rodeo in those days in the practice pen really help me out now. More so, it’s trusting the process as learning is a day-by- day thing.” 13 Photo courtesy of Texas Rangers