A Visit With Doug Bird

Right-hander Doug Bird compiled a 76-60 record with 60 saves as a starter, closer and everything in between during his six years 1973-78 with the Kansas City Royals, followed by stops with the Phillies, Yankees, Cubs and Red Sox 1979-83.

He pitched in the three LCS the Royals lost to the Yankees ’76-’78, and was in the Yankees’ bullpen when the Royals finally beat them in 1980.

He talked with me about his career at his home in Cape Coral, Florida, in March 2003. - Norman L. Macht

I was born in Corona, California, and was drafted out of high school and community college by a few teams, but wasn’t interested in signing.

I intended to go to USC or UCLA. Then, in 1969, an expansion team, Kansas City, drafted me and the Royals’ Spider Jorgensen convinced me I had a better shot signing with an expansion team than going to four years of college.

If I had it to do over again, I’d have gone to college instead of hanging around the minor leagues for three years. But he may have been right, though; I made it to Kansas City after four years in the minors.

Spider was my first manager, at Winnipeg in the Northern League, in 1969. Long bus rides, small towns and stadiums, little meal money. I was from southern California, and going from Hollywood and the beaches to places like Winnipeg and Waterloo, Iowa, took some adjusting.

After stops in Waterloo, San Jose, and Jacksonville, I matured, got better control, was throwing harder.

The Vietnam Draft

After the ’69 season at Winnipeg, I went to the Arizona fall league. During the season you’re busy playing every day, riding the buses, but that fall I started getting homesick. In those days you had to be in school or you went to Vietnam. I was going to a junior college in Arizona. With two weeks to go in the semester, I packed up my car and went home.

It wasn’t two weeks later I got my papers to report for a physical and immediate induction – same day. Then somebody blew up the draft board in South Pasadena.

All the paperwork went up in smoke. Took them four, five months to get it all back together. By that time they had switched over to a lottery system where they drew lots with birth dates on them. They drew my number in the 280s and they never called me.

If I knew who blew up the draft board, I’d thank him. Otherwise I’d have been gone, end of baseball career.

Kansas City Baseball Academy

My first spring training with Kansas City was in 1973 in Daytona. We stayed in barracks out by the speedway, must have been a thousand guys there. I thought there was no way I was going to stand out here. The next year they started the baseball academy.

They took good athletes who didn’t have much baseball experience and taught them the correct way to play the game. They had people testing our eye-hand coordination, trying to figure out why we could do things that other people couldn’t do. It seemed like a good idea, but it didn’t last.

They had some Europeans come in and film me and Steve Busby pitching in a game against the Yankees. Didn’t speak hardly any English. Knew nothing about baseball or us. But they could tell what our greatest stress points were from head to toe, described what kind of pitchers we were exactly.

Doug Bird: “I stuck around so long because I could throw every day, start, relieve, set up, close.”

They predicted that I would have no problems, but it was just a matter of time before Busby would have elbow and shoulder trouble. They were right. After winning 56 games in his first three years, he blew out his shoulder and had elbow trouble. I never had any problems until 1982; when I tried to score in a game, the catcher flipped me up in the air and I came down on my right shoulder.

I was a starter in the minor leagues, came up as a closer in ’73, went back to starting in ’76, and ended my career as a starter again. I worked middle relief, closing, everything. I preferred relieving to starting and sitting around for four days doing nothing.

We all threw every day. A starter could work 300 innings and still not be in the top five. Closers often pitched two or three innings. I stuck around so long because I could throw every day, start, relieve, set up, close. 

The LCS and the Yankees

Whitey Herzog was my favorite manager, smart, ran the team, knew the players. Nobody could outmaneuver him.  The Royals were a close-knit team. Most of us had come up together. We were young and didn’t realize how good we were. Had a lot of speed.

Slower teams would come in and their outfielders would be chasing the ball all over that big outfield. We went to the LCS three years in a row and lost to the Yankees each time. Two years they beat us in the last inning. We didn’t have the talent the Yankees had, but we had the best team in baseball.

Free agency began in 1974-75. If the owners had given in a little, there wouldn’t have been all those confrontations. But they refused, and there’s been nothing but confrontations ever since. The Royals signed the core of the team to long term contracts and added real estate investments, which later went bad.

The Phillies

The day we broke camp on April 3, 1979, I was traded to the Phillies. I liked Kansas City and didn’t want to leave. Now it’s all new hitters; American League teams didn’t see the National League in those days. The Phillies stadium was the worst I ever pitched in. The ball blew out of there. Mike Schmidt just flicked his wrists and boom, it was out of there.

We had a good team, but there was always somebody hurt. We finished fourth with basically the same team that won it all in 1980. But I was gone by then. The manager, Dallas Green, and I didn’t get along. The Phils released me and I was ready to quit.  But I signed with the Yankees.

From 1979 to 1981 I was 18-0 between the Phils, the Yankees’ farm club in Columbus, and the Yankees. Then I started June 11 in Chicago, got beat, and the next day the lockout began, resulting in the split season. So I went home to Florida. I got off the plane and a friend met me at the airport.

We went into a bar to get a drink and I see on the television that I’ve been traded to the Cubs. I called Yankees’ owner George Steinbrenner and told him, “I lose one game and you trade me? You gotta stop this trade.” He laughed and said he couldn’t do anything. He sent me a nice letter. George had a reputation for being hardnosed and rude, but he treated me okay.

I hated being traded from a first-place team to the last-place Cubs. But once I got there, what a great place to play.

I loved the fans, the ballpark, the day games. I lived downtown and took the bus to the ballpark.

After the game, I’d get back on a bus with the fans. I would have liked to finish up in Chicago, but they traded me to the Red Sox, and that’s where I finished my career in 1983.