Birdie Tebbetts

Trivia

• Four-time All-Star "Birdie" Tebbets, the 1956 National League Manager of the Year for helming the Cincinnatti Reds, played for 14 seasons in The Show as a catcher, then managed for 11 seasons before winding up as a scout for 28 years.
• As a big league manager, Tebbets acquired a reputation as being one of the most abrasive characters in baseball history.
• As a boy, young George was tagged with his distinctive moniker by an aunt who, commenting on his high-pitched voice, said "He chirps like a bird".
• Tebbets graduated from Providence College in 1934 with a degree in philosophy, the same year he was drafted by the Detroit Tigers as an amateur free agent.
• he played on the Tigers team that won the World's Championships in 1940.
• He was still in the military and missed the World Series of 1945, won by the Tigers, not appearing again in a Tigers uniform until 1946.
• After the '46 season, he was traded to Tom Yawkey's American League champion Boston Red Sox, which featured all-time great Ted Williams, who ranks with Babe Ruth as the greatest hitter baseball has ever produced.
• While with the Red Sox from 1947 through 1950, the team consistently failed to win another championship, perennially bedeviled by their hated rivals the New York Yankees and losing a one-game playoff to the Cleveland Indians in 1948.
• It was to the Indians Birdie was traded after the 1950 season, after calling some of his teammates "moronic malcontents" and "juvenile delinquents".
• This was part of his unabashed honesty and sharp tongue that tagged him as an abrasive personality. He finished out his career with Cleveland in 1952.

Quotes

• "Major league stuff and a great arm. Screwy in the head. Eliminate head and I recommend him. Get good surgeon."
• "If my players like me it's an accident of personality. I happen to like my players and I treat them like men. If a manager doesn't have confidence in his ball players, even when they're going badly, they're not going to have confidence in themselves. And when a ballplayer's confidence is gone, you haven't got a ballplayer. If you want to be a good manager, get good ballplayers."
• "My whole world is wrapped up in baseball, and that means I must live the loneliest of lives. I can't discuss my problems with my friends or the newspapermen or the players or the coaches or my wife."
• "There ought to be a second-string or "Junior Hall of Fame" for guys like me. I had a lifetime average of .270 and I'm proud of it. I poured my life's blood into it. I clawed and scrambled and fought and hustled to get it."
• "I was sold for a dollar by one drunk owner to another."
• "I don't think the physical part of catching is what it's cracked up to be. I think it's an easy job. The only thing about it is you sweat more than anybody else. Most catchers catch because they can't play anyplace else. They don't have much to complain about. They've got to be happy. There are too many catchers who are not good catchers who are showboating too much so that they can keep their job."