Ex-Royals GM ‘amazed’ by Greinke’s journey
By Tim Brown, Yahoo! Sports Nov 18, 11:06 pm EST
A day had passed since Zack Greinke(notes) had become a Cy Young Award recipient and Allard Baird’s cell phone began to take on text messages. Baird had since resisted the urge to contact Greinke, because he surmised Greinke would be well past uncomfortable about the whole thing by then. The last thing he’d want, Baird knew, was one more happy message to respond to.
(Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
Baird was once general manager of the Kansas City Royals and now is an assistant to Boston Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein. He had attended an Arizona Fall League game, the Surprise Rafters at the Mesa Solar Sox, when his phone started clattering. He’d left the general managers meetings in Chicago for Phoenix and another look at a lot of good young hitters, not giving much thought to the regular season or its awards or, for that matter, FIP.
Yet, there it was.
Zack Greinke, whom he’d once watched leave baseball to maybe never return, was named the best pitcher in the American League for 2009.
Baird sat in the bleachers of a little ballpark in Mesa, hundreds of miles from the press conferences and back slaps. Amazing, he thought, again. Amazing that Zack Greinke could be this strong. Amazing that Zack Greinke had given up a year of the game to get it back again, and not just get it back, but to be great. Amazing that Zack Greinke, that scared, tired, confused 22-year-old, would become this.
“I’m really so proud of him,” Baird said Wednesday afternoon, “as a man.”
Greinke, of course, had overcome social anxiety disorder and depression, a 5-17 season, and real life darkness that bled into baseball and back again. He’d become a good pitcher, and then a remarkable pitcher and then a pitcher not even the Royals’ crummy season could sully.
The Cy Young Award? Baird remembered it being celebrated when the guy would climb back up on the mound. He remembered it as progress when Zack smiled at the start of the day.
And so over a 20-minute conversation Wednesday afternoon Baird must have said a half-dozen times that he had no intention of diminishing this award and the baseball end of this, but, dang, how courageous Zack Greinke was without a baseball in his hand. In the game, you’re not allowed to be sick, not allowed to be fragile, not allowed to wonder if there wasn’t maybe something better out there for you.
Greinke was all those things. And then he sort of wasn’t.
He won 16 games and had an ERA of 2.16, and was so easily the AL’s best pitcher it was barely a choice. Maybe it’s the dawn of old school ballwriters accepting some greater statistical good, as we’re now being asked to believe, but probably not. Probably Greinke just deserved it, and some years are different than others, and this was one of them, and anyone who saw him pitch knew this was coming.
Which is why Baird’s phone got all hot and bothered in the desert, because Baird was in charge when Greinke came up, and when he left, because Baird did the right thing and told the young man to go home and get well and maybe one day we’ll see you again.
“I knew,” Baird said, “we had to do what was right for this kid. He was going to be a father one day, and a husband, and a grandfather. So, baseball, when this went down, it was a lot bigger than that. We had to think about the person over the player.
“There was a real young man that needed to be in a better place.”
Baird was fired in the spring of 2006, not long after Greinke left the club. He stayed in touch with Greinke, and Greinke with him. In the first week of the 2007 season, Greinke had started his way back. He pitched against the Red Sox, Baird’s new team, in the third game of the season, a game better known as Daisuke Matsuzaka’s(notes) big league debut.
Afterward, Baird and Greinke sat together and talked about the game, the Red Sox lineup and what had gotten them both there. Baird recalled leaving that conversation knowing Zack would be OK, that Zack would pitch well, and that it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t.
In the bleachers on Tuesday, he got the word. Zack had won. But, of course, Allard Baird already knew that.
“I’m still amazed,” he said.
