The Original Rich Hill... Paul Byrd | Baseball Isn't Boring

bro listen never in my life Associated the word boring with baseball F we know we know what's up me yeah famous yeah and I'm like giddy over there there smiling like holy I mean we're about to win this [ __ ] did everyone give you crap give me a good like host story you know I'm like I'm not picking it up no we both love the game we talk about it every day baseball having some popcorn you're ping around your phone i' have to way in line for 3 hours hang on cuz it's about to be a wild ride all right there's no human being I'd rather be talking to right now than Paul bird fact what an honor thank you fact fact oh so good to see you so good to hear from you and um and uh Paul bird of course great major league pitcher great broadcaster um great a lot of things great great office great backdrop for a podcast yeah I mean you got it all going on I tried hard I got a little George Brett let me help you yeah I got The Sandlot Phillies uh this is a picture of me Kansas City with my two kids oh that's a great I live on a farm just had to put unfortunately my favorite horse down that's his saddle means a lot to me and then uh you know then I got little things here like a little Paul Berg Red Sox you know that the last that name plate this will be a great segue Paul uh is that name plate from two the the last year 2009 it is and then this is uh this is 2008 you can see how the game was changing and just keep getting kept getting better all right well let me tell you one thing before start my favorite piece of memorabilia uh is a letter that I I just bought last year and it's from Jackie Robinson and he's explaining to a lady who lives in the middle of nowhere Canada looked up her house on Google um still there why he plays on Sunday she was upset that he was playing on Sunday uh and calling himself a Christian man and how could he do that and he so graciously answered her question and said I don't believe going to church on Sunday makes you a Christian but yet uh love and how you treat people and is what's important and he said it's probably not the answer you were looking for but I thought I would write back to you and give you a little more insight on how I feel Jackie Robinson I mean it was wow it was so gracious and in that letter you can see not only why he was chosen as the first you know black man because he could handle all of the craziness but you could just see and feel the grace that he gave to people and how elegant he was and the fact that he even responded back you know he had so many requests and he responded to so many so uh it's it's my favorite piece wow how how did you how did you find it how did you come across that so I have a friend Kevin keading his books in the Hall of Fame he was collecting autographs as a little kid so uh I just I've always admired his collection and I said I want to start and get something really cool and you know talked about people that I liked and and he said well Jackie Robinson it's you know can't can't really get any higher as far as history you know he's up there with Babe Ruth and all the the Legends and um so he said no matter what you you get from him it'll always hold value and so I looked and I found uh found this lady had just died and her family was putting it up for sale so I bought the whole lot and um so all this stuff came in the mail like there was another letter he wrote back to the same lady lady twice the other letter was in 55 when he explained or told her hope we do their bet we'll try to do our best they won it all that year um but this is what's interesting my buddy who's the lead authenticator Kevin keing with PSA looked at those and goes that's Jackie that's a kid in the clubhouse that's his wife that's Jackie that's Jackie because he had so much fan mail yeah he was trying to get back to everybody that's the kind of person he was um that the ones that were just signed not a personal letter nobody wrote personal letters for them but some people would just sign something and send back like a program and uh he could identify every one of them and I thought that was just fantastic did you ever like did you ever um when you were a kid like when I was a kid I sent baseball cards to players to get signed yeah did you ever do that I didn't no I grew up in Louisville Kentucky we were uh basketball Bourbon and horse racing that's why Secretariat's right here you know my dad used to take me to church Downs to gamble I'm like in the fifth grade got $2 on Old Blue coming around the stretch heart rates through the roof uh those were great days but we grew up following the Big Red Machine because they were the closest so um I was always a Johnny Bench fan George Foster I slept with George Foster a bat that I got in 77 when he had that great year it was a black bat called Black Beauty yeah um so would go there once or twice a year but it wasn't nobody aspired really to get their autographs like we didn't run down to get autographs they were almost Untouchables and I don't think card collecting or any of the autographs came in until later in the 80s and and of course uh you know I was in high school and didn't make it to any games by then well now now honestly Paul and this I wasn't going to go down this road but it's really interesting to me but now it's really autographs yeah there's still autographs but it's more selfies right I mean this is it's more yeah it's more that's the auto and I don't I think it's probably a better you know obviously better because you know autographs a lot of times guys or you don't even know I don't know if you had good cursive no one even does cursive anymore right so I don't know if if your autograph was solid or not but it's solid man I worked on it in in grade school it cost me B's and C's and math instead of A's CU I was on the side you know working on my autograph yeah Johnny Bench is a beautiful one Ted Williams one of the best and you see those guys they took such great care in writing you know their autographs I was able to get Ted Williams autograph for the first time at the White House in 91 they were honoring he and Joe dagio also got demaggio's autograph another fine autograph uh because they were honoring the streaks Ted Williams 50 years since he hit over 400 dagio the 56 game hitting streak got to meet President Bush let me tell you meeting you know dagio and Ted Williams was for me more impressive to meeting the president you know no disrespect to the country but you know those were some big- time heroes and meeting Ted Williams we had that turquoise choker on man shaking his hand my hand disappeared it was like meeting John Wayne he was just a stud and uh so it was a really powerful moment in my life I'll never forget and one of my first really big autographs well that's awesome and there's so many you've lived such a such a great life and continued to and and and great memories and and we just came across our past cross in Boston um which is a couple good you know memorable years you 2008 2009 uh you were traded to the Red Sox in 2008 uh you were on the postseason roster for you know for a team that really Paul like that I think that Tito frankone said that was the best team that was their best team and everyone was just so banged up you know at the end you got to the game seven in the Tampa Bay um but yeah again you made the postseason roster um but I do want to talk to you what I want to talk to you about is 2009 and so the reason I was thinking of you was because Rich Hill I don't know if you follow this at all uh so Rich Hill is doing exactly what you did in 2009 which is you say I want to spend time with my family first half with the idea of coming back in playing at the at the stretch Drive um you came back signed with the Red Sox your first game back and I looked it up and I'm like I remember that game it was such an awesome day August 30th 2009 six Innings three hits no runs you know not too far off probably the Little League fields or whatever you were um but take me through that that that sort of uh venture or exped ition you had in that year 2009 yeah so you know to even go back you know Terry Frank cona uh was the manager of the Phillies that Jersey right there um where I was claimed off waivers from the Braves and my first game in the big leagues for the Phillies they made a mistake in the paperwork so they had to send me to Philly they didn't know what to do they got me you know out of Triple A they thought I had a chance to make the bullpen the next year they made a mistake in the paperwork they had to send me to the big leagues they didn't know what to do so there was a game that Randy Johnson was starting on Monday they're like we're just going to start burd against that we're gonna lose anyways everything's gonna be fine so I beat him I beat Randy Johnson I throw a shut out I get the game-winning hit he hit my bad I didn't really get the hit but uh he he hit my bat we'll call it that and little liner over Short Stop Mark Lewis scored and this when I went in to Terry's office for that game and this is my first meeting with Terry Frank cona he told me he's like hey go have fun and I'm like go have fun like it's apparent not a whole lot's expected you know and probably rightfully so and this game against holiday had the same feel like man you're just you've been throwing to Little League kids you've been throwing batting practice you've only been throwing 60 feet 6 Ines for less than two weeks you're facing holiday just go try to eat some inning see how long you can survive whatever and I was like man I'm here to win we're in a playoff race there's no guarantees this is a very crucial important game and I don't care that it's holiday I mean I want to win and uh I love the fans in Boston because they just appreciate effort you can't fool them um and to get a standing ovation you know coming out or just what I mean that's just remember walking off the field and everybody knew like man hey you you're probably done or whatever but at that point seeing the crowd rise and Elevate was a very very special memory for me and and beating holiday great pitcher um being undertrained and um Terry Frank Ona met me in the Dugout he's just goes wow and goes you know points at the scoreboard and he goes I mean wow and you know gives me a big hug and everything like that and and that was it you know and then at that point the the Josh beckets and the you know Dustin Pedas and everybody coming over and you know it's a different kind of hug and and giving knuckles in The Dugout when you come in and help a team during a crucial playoff run so when you go through that year like just like Rich you have this plan and and I think it was to coach your your son's Little League team or wasn't it yeah yeah my wife just said like you know no offense like we we paid very well in the big leagues most never see any kind of good money you only 4% of players drafted make it to the big leagues only 3% of those play longer than three years because of arbitration so uh at that point you know I had played 19 years between the minors and and the big leagues and at about you know 13 14 in the big leagues and my boys were getting older and my wife just said you know she's the reasoning sounding board the the wisdom and our family and she said what's the point of money if you miss your kids grow up and um you know I wanted to win a World Series there other things I wanted to do I didn't need to throw hard to get guys out no I wasn't number one or number two pitcher but I could eat Innings and I wasn't going to panic and playoffs or things like that and so I had a purpose for teams that were hurting in that area and um so that's that's why I spent time I coached my kids I threw everybody BP and you know 12y olds are like throw me a slider you know and they have no chance but they've seen a big league slider so there's little things like that that kids would go nuts and uh I think there was a way that I stayed in shape and I would long toss and it's something I've been doing my whole life so like Rich Hill it's not like he's a rookie like all the mistakes and the little tweaks he needs to do to fine-tune his change up or curve he is a good one he's not going to need a lot of time to get that in shape provided he's healthy well so when you're you have the plan in your throw into your 12 year olds which by the way this this is lining up totally the same right he had 12 year old he had coached TW his 12year old they went up to Cooper toown for their tournament um yes I did the same you did the same thing really yeah got back from Cooperstown what a magical place that is sorry to interrupt you but exact same thing I as I was in Cooperstown I was you know they got some big pastures up there and I was uh sneaking away long tossing really so when did did you do a showcase for anybody or did you have to did you have to um no I had some different teams that were interested the Yankees were interested the beginning of the year uh Pittsburgh the Dodgers the Yankees were interested and man you know some good places I mean even Pittsburgh that's not the Yankees yeah is a sleeper place to play yeah you know everybody loves Pittsburgh great people in that town great size Great Park good pitchers Park you know they had just a lot of a lot of good offers so at the end uh the Red Sox and the Yankees were both interested and um ended up up choosing the Red Sox I love Terry the town yeah well that was the thing right you had that connection right with Frank yeah yeah well not just Frank cona but with you know I played for Theo the year before yeah right I knew that Clubhouse I like that field I like the fans I like the food um and the same thing with the Yankees you know finway Park Tuesday you're playing Toronto might as well be in the playf off S people are going nuts it's sold out they're into it you know when you at that time you know because i' played in Boston before and it was you know once they started winning in the early 2000s the next thing you know every game feels like the playoffs it's a great place to be so when when you're you sign and now you're ramp up I don't know how many how many Myer League rehab assignments did he do did you do I don't know I don't remember yeah funny story I've been you know I'm outside of Atlanta Georgia I mean it's nicknamed hot Atlanta gets hot down here yeah so you know I'm throwing to my kids and it's hot I mean but that's the thing I played in Kansas City where it's very very hot Midwest is is crazy hot the summer you got to get out in it man so so they send me down to Fort Meyers and they're like you know all these young guys are like man who's this old guy like he's not going to make it in the heat like have the ambulance ready you know and so I go out and I'm pitching I'm like give me three Innings just to start you know and they're 18 19 year olds you know they haven't seen a good slider I'm carving them up they start Bunning you know like let's see if Grandpa can feel the bunt I'm going over man I'm Sweating Bullets I'm throwing off my back leg firing sidearm nailing them at first and uh coaches are like look at this guy this guy's almost 40 years old that's how you feel the bunt you know they're using me as example all these 18 year olds and man I'm Sweating Bullets it's 105 degrees down in Fort Meyers but I was ready I've been training in Atlanta I was ready like the heat meant nothing and so they're like hey man we're just going to rush you if you're ready great if not you just go back home so you're going to go to Triple A went to Triple A and and went like I don't remember exactly but I went like five innings seven Innings and then big leagues that's it yeah you know yeah was that was all I needed and they didn't need nine innings you know I was like hey I'll give you five or six and and you've seen my act so it's not like you know you're not going to be familiar with me if I'm off or you're going to be you know panicking if I'm throwing 85 um so that doesn't mean that I'm not ready that's just what I throw and all as well well that's the thing so now you get in the game and this is sort of Rich hasn't as we're taping here you know Rich's called off but he hasn't pitched yet but still he spent two innings two innings Triple A but he carved him up right throwing 87 and yeah get in the game as you showed on on that day in 9 it is the epitome of if I know how to get Major League hitters out like that's what it is I know how to do it and that's what you did I mean I think it's yeah it's the same thing like but like that's one of the reasons and I didn't understand this when I was a rookie there's advantages to you know rookies and and guys think of it like a car there's advantage to driving a car that only has 20,000 miles on it there's disadvantages of driving a car that has 300,000 miles on it so if your arm has 300,000 miles on it you know there's disadvantages to that but the advantage to being older is you know when you're a rookie you may not have a good feel for I'll say your change up um and it may take you two months to figure out what you're doing wrong or how to get back in the groove whereas a veteran may take him two pitches so Rich Hill doesn't need time to figure it out it's more of a physical 's arm you're not producing as much testosterone you know there's they may take you longer to recover you may not be able to throw as long a bullpen but that's okay um I had the privilege of playing with some great pitchers in my life one of them was Greg Maddox who never threw a bullpen really he threw 10 yeah he threw 10 pitches against the center field wall not a catcher wow he turned around in batting practice and he threw 10 pitches against the center field wall and he said okay I'm good wow wow you know I've got a picture here it's not behind me but it's of Johnny San and Warren spawn and there was a phrase you know uh spawn and sane and Pray For Rain because everybody else and their staff wasn't that good so cool both signed it Johnny sent saying underneath it in quotes says Pray For Rain it's awesome it's an awesome piece but Johnny s was a pitching coach who mentored Leo Mazon and Johnny s has the most 20 game winners in all of history as a pitching coach and his philosophy was different which is we're GNA throw our bullpens at 40 50% just nice and easy just a game of catch but once you get on the decline of a mound it taxes the back of your shoulder more than if you throw on flat ground so glavin another Hall of Famer changed that and threw touch and field on flat ground in the left field I'm sorry in the right field Corner during batting practice Smoltz like to get on the mound what I learned from that very good staff was everybody's different Maddox needs 10 pitches to get ready those against the wall he doesn't even need anybody glavin it's painfully slow to watch it's like he's just not even trying it's just working on his mechanics just fine tuning that and then Smoltz wants to get on the mound well there's no wrong or right but there was wisdom of what Johnny S taught which was let's fine-tune our mechanics our arm without taxing it and I think that's if I were to give a critique I'm not against New School baseball I love the game I love your baseball truly is not boring but if I had a critique for the younger guys it would be no one to air it out and know when to just work on your craft without expending so much on that motor of your car that uh you know you want to to preserve so that's a perfect segment first of all what what was your fast ball like that day do you remember was it it was mid mid mid uper 80s yeah okay I just I wasn't like blow heat there's times where I'm like o yeah I got a good one tonight which means 90 91 I'll be touching 92 but most of the time I threw upper to mid 80s but you knew but you knew when you got when you got going you're like okay it's gonna be okay right like then that yeah yeah yeah yeah and I found out Rob Early in well middle of my career I found out it's really true it's really true location is more important than velocity people say that and preach that but they don't believe it because what you do is what you believe yeah and if you're out there in the middle and you got second and third and there's one out and you're up by one and it's a seventh inning you got to get this guy out I'm gonna see what you believe not by what you tell me with your mouth but by what you do and if you start hyperventilating and overthrowing and throwing everything as hard as you can you just told me that you believe velocity is the number one most important thing about pitching that was me early in my career later in my career I learned to in those big moments relax and just hit my spot that's it okay that's it and you will still throw hard I promise your adrenaline's G to be up and it's going to be there but going be in a much better location and that's what makes it really hard to hit is when the pitchers locate so I I really appreciate your time Paul the last thing is it sort of morphs with what we're talking about been asking a lot of guys in the podcast about their take on the the cause of all so many injuries in in pitching and I've got I've gotten a ton of answers all of them good like all of them good all of them provoking for you what is it like what what is what is is it is it maybe it's what exactly what you're talking about the guys are just you you know just trying to throw too hard I don't know what yeah no so Dr Andrews I'll just go with you know science Dr Andrews did a study uh years ago and if you threw over a hundred Innings before your 17th birthday you were three times more likely to need Sur major surgery as a pitcher um and he actually found that throwing a curveball early was you know not detrimental to the arm provided you through a correctly and that's you know something that's important for a young pitcher but overuse was the problem and you have to throw to build arm strength to build that up but the problem is overuse and then the harder you throw it's just a fact the more chance that you will hurt your arm I'll just talk about one surgery versus I've had two shoulder surgeries and I've had three elbow but is a Tommy John scar what I learned uh when I had my Tommy John was that you don't stress thear collateral ligament which holds your elbow together when you release a baseball it keeps this together you don't use that till you throw over 82 so only common sense for me would tell me well then the harder I throw that the more I will need that or more that I will use that to quote Dr Chandler a great Tor here in Atlanta he says when I die my first question of God will be why didn't you give us stronger Tommy John lits why didn't you give us stronger ucl's I'm like what a great question you're probably the only guy that's going to asking that but we're designed to throw the ball underhanded and that's why you can throw all day long down there so I think the harder you throw people are like oh guys aren't throwing harder now the guns off you know I'm in The Dugout guys throwing harder guys are bigger and stronger maybe it's not five miles an hour but it's a few so when I played mid 2000s average velocity for the starter was like 88 89 I think it was 88.7 you know now it's like 93.4 so that's a big jump in the history of the game within 10 to 15 years is when that number changed well what happened is it the guns is it well people you know I think they they trained more I think they started doing arm exercises more which is a good thing but with that comes higher velocity and with that comes you know more injuries so you know if you drive a Maserati 150 probably going to break down more than that Ford truck that you're driving 65 down the interstate my opinion I like the Maserati don't get me wrong if I can throw 95 104 I'm gonna do it but I just know that it's going to come with the risk of injury and so I want to make sure that I'm training hard I'm doing my exercises my job so that my decelerator muscles can handle that I don't want to overthrow dce G matasaka one of the members of the Braves called the monster in Japan that was his nickname because he just threw and through and through and he was one of the few Japanese pitchers that could carry that weight load Nolan Ryan there's some anomalies out there but in general the harder you throw you want to make sure you get your rest you eat properly you train you do all of those things because your arm is going to be taxed more last thing young kids teenagers high schoolers young men if you have Tommy John it lasts seven years on average so I coach and I see a lot of parents High School oh my son needs to have Tommy John so he can throw harder no he doesn't because once you hit Tommy John you start that time clock and you want to hold out as long as you can and a lot of people believe the reason they throw harder after Tommy John is actually not because of the ligament but because For the First Time in their life they train really hard with all of these exercises and physical therapy something they may not have done or paid attention to with great detail once you go to a physical therapy clinic there's somebody standing there you have to do all your exercises you have to do all of that next thing you know you're throwing harder they think it's a Tommy John it's not so I would hold off as long as you can and it's not a magical surgery um the training eating right getting your rest proper mechanics is man rob that's a long answer no you got to be careful when you ask me question no man like you you nailed it you nailed it it's honestly you nailed it and I I I wanted to do a compilation at the end of this year of all the different you know like Kenley Jansen cited the pitch clock I mean there's there's all of these different there's all these different things but I think that you hit the nail on the head I think that's sort of the consensus um yeah so but Paul man this has been a highlight for me it's so good seeing you so good hearing from you and uh yeah and uh t-shirts are on the way so i j keep up the great work man uh love the hat your broadcast keep it going man baseball truly is not boring it's a blast to watch and learn and here I am 53 years old now still learning it's great awesome thanks