Doug Bird: looks back on his pitching days in the majors: former right-hander played 11 years in the big leagues, winning 73 games for the Royals, Phillies, Yankees, Cubs and Red Sox - Interview

Baseball Digest, Feb, 2003 by Norman L Macht

ASK A BALLPLAYER IF THERE WAS anyone who was especially helpful in his getting to the big leagues, and he'll usually name a minor league manager, or a pitching or hitting coach. But for Doug Bird, starter and reliever on the Kansas City Royals' ALCS clubs of 1976-78, his benefactor is unknown.

Drafted out of high school by Cleveland but unsigned, then by the newborn Royals out of junior college in 1968, Bird, a native of southern California, was headed for USC or UCLA. Spider Jorgensen, slated to manage the Royals' farm club in Winnipeg, had other ideas for him.

"Spider convinced me I had a better shot signing with an expansion team than going four years to college," Bird said as he sat poolside at his home in Cape Coral, Florida.

Going from Hollywood and the surf scene to the Canadian prairies and long bus rides took some adjusting, but Bird won six and lost two as a starter for Winnipeg in 1969. From there he went to the Arizona Fall League, and enrolled in Mesa Junior College. The Vietnam War was raging, and being in school kept him out of the draft. But by now the 19-year-old Bird was homesick for the beaches.

"There were two weeks to go in the semester," Bird recalled, "and I just packed up my car and went home. Two weeks later I got a notice to report for a physical and immediate induction into the Army. Then somebody blew up the draft board in South Pasadena. All the paperwork went up in smoke. By the time they got everything straightened out, they had switched over to a lottery system where they drew lots with birthdates on them. My number was up in the 280s, and they never called me.

"If I knew who blew up the draft board, I'd thank him, cause otherwise I'd have been gone. End of baseball career."

While Bird regrets not going to college, he admits that Spider Jorgensen was right. After stops in Waterloo, San Jose and Jacksonville as a starter, Bird reached Kansas City in 1973--as a closer.

"My first major league spring training was in Daytona. We stayed in barracks out by the speedway. There must have been a thousand guys there, and I thought there's no way I'm going to stand out here. But I didn't grive up a run all spring. It didn't bother me to throw every day, and I had good control. (Bird would average just over two walks per nine innings.)

"So the manager, Jack McKeon, made me the closer. Nobody asked me, but it was okay; I preferred it to doing nothing for four days between starts."

In those days, closers pitched more than one inning; Bird worked 102 innings in 54 games. "We were our own setup men. We all threw every day. Dennis Leonard would pitch a complete game, and be back on the side the next day throwing as hard as he did in the game. He'd pitch almost 300 innings a year."

The Royals were baseball's most innovative organization. "I thought their baseball academy was a great idea. They took good athletes who didn't have much baseball experience and taught them how to play the game. Frank White was one of their graduates.

"They brought in some European photographers who filmed us in action and used the pictures to determine how much excess stress we were putting on our shoulders, elbows, knees, hips, ankles, down to our toes. They filmed Steve Busby and me pitching in New York. Afterwards they met with our pitching coach, Galen Cisco. They didn't know anything about baseball, but they accurately described what kind of pitchers we were. I was a tall, skinny guy with a big, fluid delivery. Steve was stockier, a power pitcher.

"They said I would have no arm problems; the angles of my delivery were where they should be. They predicted that Busby would have trouble with his elbow and shoulder. I didn't see anything wrong with his delivery, but they said he was putting excessive stress on those points. It would be just a matter of time before he had problems. They were right."

After pitching no-hitters in each of his first two seasons, winning 22 in 1974 and 18 in 1975, Busby blew out his shoulder and had elbow trouble. He won 56 games in his first three full years, 11 in his next four. "I throw the ball harder than Nolan Ryan," Busby once said. "It just doesn't get there as fast."

But the Royals did not use the photographers again.

Whitey Herzog became the Royals' manager in mid-1975, and turned Bird back into a starter. "I wasn't as strong as I should have been," Bird said. "I'd begin to fade about the sixth inning." He was 12-10 as a starter and reliever as Herzog led them to their first ALCS, the first of three in a row against the Yankees.

"We were a close-knit team; most of us had come up together. We were young and aggressive and didn't realize how good we were. We had a lot of speed: George Brett, Frank White, Amos Otis, Hal McRae. Slower teams would come in and their outfielders would be chasing the ball all over our big outfield.

"We beat out a strong Oakland club that had been dominating the West Division, and just kept going. But we didn't have the talent the Yankees had."

In the best-of-five pennant playoffs in 1976, Bird pitched four and two-thirds innings of Game 4 and got the 74 win to tie the series. In Game 5, George Brett's three-run homer in the eighth tied it at 6-6. Chris Chambliss's ninth-inning home run gave the Yankees the pennant.