Baby Bombers Page 9
“I was upset. I missed baseball tryouts because I was playing basketball,” Bird said. “It wouldn’t have made a difference, but I stopped. I didn’t like that. I always liked baseball. It wasn’t a matter of trying to focus on it, I enjoyed it the most, so why not do that one?”
A stellar student who juggled his sports commitments while bringing home report cards filled with As and Bs, Bird played two seasons as a catcher (2009–2010) on the varsity squad, where he enjoyed calling the games and being involved in every pitch.
“The big thing for me was just the attitude that he had, the type of person that he was,” Dean Adams, Bird’s baseball coach at Grandview, told the YES Network. “What he brought to the table besides being able to play. It was the attitude and the work ethic and the personality. He is an extremely mature young man.”
Future Orioles pitcher Kevin Gausman was one of Bird’s teammates and recalls marveling after Bird stepped into the batting cage on his first day of winter baseball workouts.
“I was like, ‘This guy is the best guy on our team, right now,’” Gausman said. “It wasn’t close.”
Named as Colorado’s Gatorade Player of the Year during his senior season, there are still tales told at Grandview about Bird’s bombs. Aided by an aluminum bat and Colorado’s thin air, Gausman said he was awed when Bird cleared the centerfield fence 400 feet from home plate, reaching the netting of a tennis court that sat about fifty feet behind the ballfield.
“It was dead quiet,” Gausman said. “Nobody could say anything, just looking around.”
Those sorts of displays intrigued the Yankees, who selected him in the fifth round of the 2011 draft after he had hit a Colorado-best 27 homers with a .574 average during his final two years of high school. Bird wrestled with his decision as he weighed the allure of a pro contract against a scholarship offer from the University of Arkansas. He loved the small-town appeal of the Fayetteville campus and the idea of playing in the Southeastern Conference, but also couldn’t resist picturing himself in pinstripes. Bird’s parents told him that they would be supportive of whichever path he chose.
“They were never the type that said, ‘Hey, you’ve got to do this, play this sport,’” Bird said. “They just always told me, do what you want to do, we’ll support you. Have fun, enjoy it, give your all, and that’s kind of how it was. After a bad game, it was, ‘Go get ‘em tomorrow.’”
“My dad never played baseball, so he never really coached me, if you will, but he was always there for me if I needed it. Eventually, I kind of grew out of what he could do, and then I always kind of joked that my mom was my best hitting coach. She’d tell me, ‘See the ball, hit the ball. You always have, so do that.’”
Accepting a $1.1 million signing bonus, Bird’s signature dried in time to participate in four Gulf Coast League games at the end of 2011, beginning his long climb toward New York.
Greg Bird during his 2013 season with the Charleston RiverDogs, when he batted .288 with 20 home runs and 84 RBIs in 130 games. (Courtesy of the Charleston RiverDogs)
Greg Bird drew the Yankees’ interest at Grandview High School in Colorado, where he batted .553 with 12 homers and 38 RBIs as a senior and was named the 2011 Gatorade High School Player of the Year. (Courtesy of the Charleston RiverDogs)
“It’s something growing up that you always want to do,” Bird said. “I think there was a little period where I signed, you’re a little bit overwhelmed by everything that’s going on. Once that slowed down, I think deep down I always kind of knew. Baseball is tough and you have to take it day by day, and that’s part of the process. I think hearing that from other guys, coaches, staff, definitely helped keep that confidence.”
Once Bird was in the pipeline, concerns over the health of his back prompted a conversion into a first baseman. Bird embraced the challenge, spending many hours drilling on the minutia of the position with Carlos Mendoza, then one of the team’s roving instructors and now a coach on the big league squad. As his confidence increased, Bird started to envision himself playing the position at Yankee Stadium, where a five-time Gold Glove Award winner and three-time Silver Slugger was winding down an outstanding career.
• • •
For years, first base in the Bronx had belonged to Mark Teixeira, who signed an eight-year, $180 million contract with the Yankees prior to the 2009 season and played a key role in helping the franchise win their most recent championship title. That season, Teixeira was a monster, tying the Rays’ Carlos Pena for the American League lead with 39 home runs while pacing the Junior Circuit with 122 RBIs, 85 extra-base hits, and 344 total bases.
During slumps, Teixeira often invited questioners to look at “the back of my baseball card,” a not-so-subtle way of pointing out the ongoing string of seasons in which he had slugged 30 or more homers while driving in 100 or more runs. From 2004 through 2011, Teixeira averaged 36 homers and 117 RBIs while wearing the uniforms of the Rangers, Braves, Angels, and Yankees. Indeed, the flip sides of his Topps-issued collectibles were impressive.
That consistency began to slip in 2012, when a nagging cough, wrist inflammation, and a calf strain forced Teixeira to miss thirty-nine games. A routine workout in preparation for the World Baseball Classic spoiled Teixeira’s 2013 season; taking a practice swing at a ball on a tee, Teixeira experienced a painful grab in his right wrist. The diagnosis was a partially-torn tendon sheath that eventually required surgery. Teixeira batted .209 over the next two seasons before rebounding with a resurgent 2015, earning his final All-Star Game selection.
Arguably the Yankees’ MVP to 2015’s midway point, having hit a team-leading 31 homers, Teixeira sustained a small fracture when he fouled a ball off his right shin in an August game against the Twins. In a parallel to Bird’s 2017 ankle issues that did not go unnoticed, the severity of Teixeira’s season-ending injury wasn’t properly diagnosed for another four weeks.
That opened a door for Bird, who had been named the organization’s minor league Player of the Year in 2013 after hitting .288 with 20 home runs, 84 RBIs, and a minor league-leading 107 walks for Class-A Charleston of the South Atlantic League. Al Pedrique, who managed Bird that season, compared his plate approach to big league veteran Lyle Overbay.
“He had great plate discipline,” Pedrique said. “Very smart, hit the ball the other way with authority. When he needed to pull the ball, he would pull the ball. I had Overbay in Arizona in Double-A, and he was basically the same type of hitter. Line drive, gap-to-gap power, very good plate discipline with runners in scoring position.”
Though the start of Bird’s 2014 season was delayed by a lower back injury, scouts raved not only about his power upside, but also a level swing that promised to allow him to hit for average. To the organization’s delight, Bird cut down on his strikeouts, reducing that number from 132 in 2013 to 97 the following year. Opposing clubs took notice, and Bird became one of the most commonly requested players in Cashman’s dealings with other GMs.
In July 2015, Cashman volleyed proposals to upgrade his starting pitching but made it known that Bird was one of his untouchable prospects, along with Aaron Judge, Jorge Mateo, and Gary Sanchez. Rebuffed in their attempts to pry one of those players loose, the Phillies instead dealt left-hander Cole Hamels to the Rangers (for a package that included five quality prospects and veteran pitcher Matt Harrison). The Tigers shipped left-hander David Price to the Blue Jays, where he helped Toronto lock up the AL East by going 9-1 with a 2.30 ERA in eleven starts. Price netted three pitchers for Detroit: Matt Boyd, Jairo Labourt, and Daniel Norris.
At that time, the Yankees had also considered pursuing relievers Aroldis Chapman and Craig Kimbrel, but ultimately opted to stand pat. Chapman would eventually land in New York, but only after his value was lowered by an October 2015 incident that prompted a thirty-game suspension under MLB’s domestic violence policy. Bird remembers being excited because the Yankees seemed to have the fortitude to keep their group of rising prospects intact.
“We dreame
d of playing together here and figuring it out along the way,” Bird said. “We enjoy each other and enjoy playing with each other, and we always have. You build a good clubhouse with talented guys, you’ve got something.”
Though they declined to make a splashy trade, Cashman found an alternate route to bolster the roster by promoting Bird and Severino from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Bird made his debut on August 13, 2015 against the Indians in Cleveland, which he called “the best 0-for-5 ever.” Six days later, Bird hit his first two big league homers off the Twins’ Ervin Santana in a 4–3 victory at Yankee Stadium. Girardi raved that the Yankees seemed to have a “professional hitter” on their hands in Bird.
“He’s got a slow heartbeat and you can see it,” Girardi said. “He doesn’t go out of the zone, he knows what he wants to do and has a plan. I think it’s in his DNA, especially at that age.”
Yankees radio broadcaster Suzyn Waldman, who has covered the team in some form or fashion since the late 1980s, recalls exchanging pleasantries with Bird’s parents during his first few weeks in the majors. During that interaction, she paid the young man a compliment of the highest order.
“These players have all grown up where winning is the only important thing,” Waldman said. “You hear it come out of Greg Bird all the time. The things that they say, it’s more than they’re having fun. They’ve got an idea of what it takes to be a Yankee and succeed here. I remember meeting Bird’s parents and I said, ‘Your son is a born Yankee.’ He’s just like that. He’s Mattingly. I don’t know how good he’s going to be; you don’t know. But I said that to his parents.”
Proving he had the chops to take over a key position in the midst of a pennant race, Bird came through in the clutch again on September 22, mashing a three-run homer in the 10th inning off the Blue Jays’ Mark Lowe that lifted New York to a 6–4 win at Rogers Centre. After watching Bird snare a ball out of the first few rows of the seats in another game at Yankee Stadium, Cashman compared Bird’s demeanor to that of John Olerud, who hit .295 over a seventeen-year career in the big leagues, including a cameo with the Yankees in 2004.
Greg Bird’s 11 homers in 2015 tied the Mets’ Mike Jacobs (2005) for the most by any player in his first big league season after debuting in August or later. (© Keith Allison)
“It wasn’t an easy play. A lot of people would have come out with the crowd roaring, with the fist or smirk or pride, showing what a great play they’d made,” Cashman said. “Bird was the same demeanor, as if he just received the throw from shortstop for the final out of the inning. Just jogged, trotting in to the dugout. He’s got a real special way about him that I think will serve him well in his career, especially in a big market. He’s not excitable.”
Eight days later, at Yankee Stadium, Bird squinted through the first champagne celebration of his life as the Yankees secured the American League Wild Card with a 4–1 victory over the Red Sox that also happened to be the 10,000th win in franchise history. He was four years removed from his first professional at-bat, and the journey seemed to have transpired in an instant.
“It’s like, all these years you put in and then all of a sudden you’re just there,” Bird said, snapping his fingers for emphasis. “All of a sudden, you wake up and you’re in the playoffs.”
The fun was short-lived. Astros left-hander Dallas Keuchel limited the Yankees to three hits in the Wild Card game, one of which was a single by Bird. The Yankees went silently against a trio of relievers before trudging toward the clubhouse with a 3–0 loss, having no interest in watching the Houston players turn the Yankee Stadium diamond into a beer-soaked playground.
Bird could not have imagined it at the time, but that would mark his final time on a big-league diamond until 2017. Bird had missed a month of the 2015 season while with Double-A Trenton, complaining of discomfort in his right shoulder, but a regimen of rest and rehab calmed the issue. After the Wild Card game, Bird’s agent Jim Murray informed the Yankees that Bird’s shoulder was bothering him again.
“It was not structurally right,” Bird said. “Early on in the year, I was getting frustrated with the feeling that I had. Hitting is a big feel for me. I couldn’t feel what I normally wanted to feel, so I figured out how to work through that and get by.”
Rest and rehab were again recommended, but as Bird began ramping up his workouts for spring training, he continued to experience issues. Evaluated by two doctors, the diagnosis this time was a right labrum tear. Bird had a season-ending procedure, then attended spring training, often sitting forlornly in a corner locker while his teammates hurried to the fields for drills.
There was one positive from that time on the sidelines, as Bird fell in love—with a cat. A family friend from Colorado, Kelly Westover, persuaded Bird to adopt the hairless feline, who is named Mr. Delicious and is a fourth-generation descendant from Mr. Bigglesworth, the wrinkled companion to Mike Myers’ Dr. Evil in the 1997 comedy Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.
Bird was skeptical, but he invited Westover to bring the cat to Tampa, where she showed him the paperwork that confirmed his Hollywood lineage. That was a fun talking point, but more importantly to Bird, he discovered that the cat’s personality meshed perfectly with his own.
“She had ‘Lish’ for a long time and always wanted me to take him, and I just never had the time,” Bird said. “Couldn’t do it. Finally, I took him. I’ve never been a cat person, but he’s great. He’s more like a dog. Everyone is a little bit standoffish at first with him, but once they meet him and get around him, he’s super social. He’s great.”
Not all of Bird’s friends saw the appeal—at least, not right away. It can take some time to adjust to the idea of petting a living creature that feels like a warm peach. Gausman, the Orioles pitcher, has noticed that Bird has a tendency to talk about Mr. Delicious like a proud parent.
“He’s like, ‘You’ve got to meet him. He’s got a great personality,’” Gausman said. “It’s like, ‘Dude, it’s a cat.’ He told me he had a cat, and I said, ‘Cool.’ Then he showed me a picture of it and I was like, ‘Oh man, what’s wrong with your cat? Is your cat dying?’”
When the Yankees packed up their gear to head north and begin the 2017 season, Bird pointed Mr. Delicious toward Colorado, not certain how to balance the demands of playing in the big leagues and caring for a feline during the summer months. They were reunited in the Big Apple that September, in time for Bird to turn another season of pain into a postseason of pleasure.
“I bet on myself,” Bird said. “I knew I could come back and be a part of this.”
CHAPTER 6.
Deadline Dealing
From his first days carrying a Yankees credential in the summer of 1986, Brian Cashman had heard the organizational mantra drummed into his head. George M. Steinbrenner once famously said that “winning is second only to breathing,” and it was more than a pithy catch-phrase for The Boss. Steinbrenner was clear on this topic: the Yankees were supposed to win the World Series each and every year, and anything short of that was a failure.
General manager of the New York Yankees may be one of the most impressive titles in professional sports, but it had never been Cashman’s dream job. After spending his early childhood in Washingtonville, New York, Cashman moved to Lexington, Kentucky, before high school, where his father John—a horse racing enthusiast—managed the Castleton Farm, helping to raise Standardbreds for harness racing.
A scrappy second baseman, leadoff hitter, and history major during his time at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., Cashman had a summer job driving a truck for the United Parcel Service, and briefly entertained thoughts of becoming a full-time employee. He was able to upgrade those plans to an internship with the Yankees; Cashman’s father had served a stint at Florida’s Pompano Park, a track that Steinbrenner had been known to frequent in the days when the Yankees called Fort Lauderdale their spring home.
Cashman worked in the minor league scouting department during the daytime, then assisted wi
th Yankee Stadium security at night, an assignment that sometimes included breaking up scuffles between rowdy fans. More than a few times, the five-foot-seven, 160-pound Cashman returned home with fresh scrapes for his efforts.
“I was bigger than I am today,” Cashman said. “If you look at my college baseball pictures, people say, ‘Wow, you’ve got a neck!’ I’m the same height, but my physical side was a lot different than it is now. It’s easy when you have a lot of gigantic security people grabbing one person. Four or five on one, it’s pretty easy to deal with. They’d leave me an ankle to grab.”
Upon his college graduation, Cashman was offered a full-time position as a baseball operations assistant, when Woody Woodward was the Yankees’ GM. During that 1987 season, Cashman roamed the hallways at Yankee Stadium and watched Woodward struggle with his role on a daily basis.
Once a light-hitting infielder with the Braves and Reds, Woodward had played nine seasons in the majors. Now he was being referred to as “The Pharmacist,” an in-house reference to the desk drawer stash of aspirin and blood pressure medication that Woodward needed to deal with Steinbrenner’s frequent tongue lashings.
In June of that season, Steinbrenner pushed Woodward to deal knuckleballer Joe Niekro to the Twins for backup catcher Mark Salas. When Niekro returned to Yankee Stadium a month later, firing six scoreless innings against his former team, Steinbrenner ordered Woodward to face the media and take full responsibility for the trade. (Woodward was granted a one-night reprieve when the Yankees rallied for twelve runs against Minnesota’s bullpen.)
“It was a war zone,” Cashman said. “It was a very difficult place to work. Tensions were high. The turnover was extreme and the pressure was off the charts. It’s still the same type of pressure, but it’s not the same type of atmosphere. It was a pretty intimidating place back then.”