Greg Bird was once thought to be the next stalwart first baseman for the Yankees, someone who could bꦰ▨e part of a new championship core.
Injuries derailed that dream, and he bounced around with the Phillies, Rockies and Blue Jays organizations, even joining the Yankees for a second stint in 2022, a brief tenure in Triple-A.
Being unable to🌳 find his game again ruined his relationship 🐈with the sport he loves.
“I think for a while I was mad at baseball,” Bird, who hasn’t played in the majors since 2019, . “I talked to a lot of guys, and a lot of guys go through it. You get mad at certain things and you get mad at people. But everyone is just trying to do their job — just like I am. I think it’s a lesson in just growing up in the world, sort of. When you play baseball your whole life, what do you know? Once you stop and get out there and see the world, it’s a big old place and there’s a lot going on.”
Now, Bird is enjoyꦚing baseball aga🐽in in an unexpected place.
The 31-year-old is playing for the Melbourne Aces in Australia, where he’s hitting .273 with seven home runs, 29 RBIs and an .867 OPS in 29 games.
This comes after a brief stint with the Quebec Capitales of the indepꦫend🎀ent Frontier League over the summer, which followed a stretch of time Bird spent back home in Colorado with family while coaching baseball at his old high school.
𒁏“A lot of people all said the same thin𝔉g: ‘If there’s any part of you that wants to play, you need to play again,’” Bird told The Athletic. “There’s a part of me that still wants to play. And overall, I needed some time off, to be honest. I would say now I just have a little bit of a different perspective, but when you’re on a track to the big leagues, too, and you get drafted and that’s what you’re doing — granted that’s a great opportunity and a great gift — you know there’s an outside world of baseball but you don’t ever see it. Now, seeing it makes me have a different respect for the game, plus you learn different things because you see different things, different cultures.”
Bird showed off his tantalizing potential in 2015, when he hit 11 home runs and drove in 31 runs with an .871 OPS in 178 plate appearances, but he missed the entire🌠 2016 season with a shoulder injury, which was just the beginning of a series of injury setbacks.
Bird wanted to be everything the Yankees hoped he would be, a♛nd he bottled up his emotions as his career went sideways.
“The biggest thing is not letting it eat you up. That’s what happened for a while,” he told The Athletic. “I know outwardly I’m not usually a very emotional and hyped-up person, but inwardly it bothers me. I want to be a guy that people can rely on. Year in and year out, getting hurt and dealing with everything that came with that, it definitely took a toll on me, and I know it does other guys, too. I definitely wore it inwardly probably more than people knew outwardly.”
Bird wants to get back to the majors, but it’s more important for him now to enjoy himself.
“Why worry about stuff you can’t control? You can’t,” Bird said. “It’s just a wasted space of your time and effort. That was a valuable lesson, and I wouldn’t have learned it without baseball.”