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Get Out & Get Under. The Redlegs themselves are the first to quarrel with Birdie's earthy formula. Good players can be the making of a good manager, but Birdie's success is proof enough that a good manager can be the making of good players. Says Outfielder-turned-PitcherHal Jeff coat: "Birdie isn't a manager at all, if you want to know the truth. He's a teacher. He has a big knack of showing a ballplayer the results of effort and ability. Instead of saying two and two is four, he gives a player a problem and lets him figure it out. That way it's lasting. It's often said that the dumbest thing you can do in baseball is to get 'smart,' but Birdie makes you think. He makes it interesting because you get interested in yourself. It's like a kid learning to swim. First a few strokes, then courage. Then he realizes he has the ability to stay above water. First thing you know, he's going across the pond. Birdie makes you like baseball; he's a real good teacher."
Says Catcher Ed Bailey: "Hell, he changed me all the way around. He taught me more the one year I was sitting on the bench than I learned in my whole life; situations, how to go, what to do. He taught me how to get the ball away quicker in a throw, how to move easier on defense. I was probably the world's worst fly ball catcher. He taught me how to get out and get under."
Third Baseman Don Hoak, who was ready to quit baseball when the Chicago Cubs sent him to Cincinnati this season, remembers how Birdie took him aside in spring training and said: "You just can't hit .215 and play in the big leagues. Now you're going to do things my way and see how we make out." Hoak has been making out so well that he is third in the league in Runs Batted In (49). Says he: "Birdie's the guy who helped me—the helpful little things, the kind of little things that can help a little guy like me. He's the best manager I ever played for."
One after another, all the Redlegs lavish praise on Birdie. They know what he means when he says: "There ought to be a second-string or junior Hall of Fame for guys like me. I'll read about some superstar who has had a bad season and the writers apologize when they say, 'He only hit .311 that year.' Listen, 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." Thanks to Birdie, the whole Redleg team is clawing and scrambling and fighting and hustling, and they have learned that belligerent approach to baseball from a man who never knew anything else.
Lips Like a Bird. Birdie started his scrambling when he was only eleven and determined to get the job of mascot on the Nashua (N.H.) Millionaires, a semi-pro baseball team that had just been organized in the New England mill town where he grew up. "I scared off three or four kids, and I was a better player than the others I couldn't scare off." In those days, Birdie's hero was a former big-league catcher named Bill Haeffner. Bill lent the youngster a mitt, and Birdie's career began. Soon he could catch the fastest pitcher on the club.