Birdie: Confessions of a Baseball Nomad

During his 65-year career in professional baseball, Birdie Tebbetts was a player, coach, manager, scout and executive. Nobody knew the game the way Birdie did. From Hank Greenberg to Reggie Jackson, Birdie worked with all the brightest stars in baseball's constellation. When he passed away in 1999, Birdie left an eight-foot long shelf of personal diaries that Morrison, his cousin and closest confidant, has scoured to create this behind-the-scenes memoir.

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To hear Birdie Tebbetts tell it, the catcher is definitely in the catbird seat - and that unique perspective pretty much shaped the way he saw things during his 65-year career in baseball. In Birdie: Confessions of a Baseball Nomad, Birdie tells about - and on - the impressive cast of characters he came to know intimately in his stints as catcher, manager, front office exec and scout. The book is written with Jim Morrison (foreword by Reggie Jackson).

Tebbetts spins tale after tale about his colleagues and competitors in Detroit, Boston, Cleveland, New York, Milwaukee and Cincinnati where, as manager, he was featured in a Time Magazine cover story in 1957. His razor-sharp stories are drawn from his meticulous and voluminous diaries (largely in code) written through six decades and from the audiotapes he made in his later years. We see Hank Greenberg advising Birdie on negotiating his first big contract; Ted Williams desperately trying to rally his team into banning sportswriters from the clubhouse; and Casey Stengel revealing the secret of his winning ways.

Readers will meet the many faces of Birdie Tebbetts

Birdie the shrink: sizing up pitcher BoBo Newsom known for his whining: "I found out that if you fell for his sob stories his pitching was lousy, so I always brought him up short, then he'd get mad and throw like hell."

Birdie the chivalrous: protecting the job of a vertigo-striken umpire: "when I raise my right hand it's a strike, and when I raise my glove it's a ball." The ploy worked and no one was the wiser.

Birdie the troublemaker: slyly baiting a Cleveland batter to lose his cool and get thrown out of the game by the ump who commented: "Birdie, I saw what you did, you nasty little shit."

Birdie the family man: following his daughter around the house with a tape recorder: "Now Patricia will be doing a ballet dance. And she looks lovely today."

Modern day players can learn a boatload of useful things from Birdie: how to get along with umps (and play mind-games with them); how to rattle a batter (tell him what the pitch will be); and how to sign a baseball properly.

Birdie takes us from his hard-scrabble beginnings in Nashua, New Hampshire to war-time games played in the shadow of Mt. Surabachi for the troops. Along the way he philosophizes on umps, the healing force of baseball and its changing face. He's well-qualified in that: "I'm just a baseball guy," he says. "It's all I've ever been. It's all I ever wanted to be."

About the Authors
Birdie Tebbetts died in 1999 leaving behind an eight-foot long shelf of diaries as well as numerous tapes about his life and times in baseball.

James Morrison, Birdie's cousin and confidant of 60 years, has brought Birdie to life in these pages - in Tebbetts' authentic and distinctive voice. An adman for 15 years, Morrison has been an independent documentary film producer for 30 years. The author of several books, he resides in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

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“The Colorado Springs author's (James Morrison) persistence was rewarded with 'Birdie: Confessions of a Baseball Nomad' a collaboration with Tebbetts that Morrison dismisses with a shrug as a "book intended for guys," but that is a good more than that. … The book is a mix of acute and funny observations delivered in first person that deal very little with numbers, but more with personalities, issues and moments in time."
--Jim Bainbridge, The (Colo.) Gazette (April 14, 2002)

"One of the most interesting sections of the this detail-rich account of baseball during its golden age concern the relationship between players' wives and how it can affect a player's - and thus the team's - performance. Where else could you find out that, on the great Milwaukee Brave teams of the fifties, the wives of ace pitchers Lew Burdette and Warren Spahn hated each other? This is an enjoyable, gossipy look behind the scenes of the grand old game related by a man who loved every minute of his baseball life."
--Wes Lukowsky, Booklist (March 1, 2002)

"Through his reassembled diaries, coupled with reflections from family members, the character of a funny, contemplative and fair-minded man comes through."
--David Plaut, USA Today Sports Weekly (May 15-21, 2002)

" 'Birdie' is a quick read and fun. It is a worthy tribute to a man who never achieved the stature or popularity of a Mays or a Mantle, but whose contribution to the game helped propel baseball to the soaring popularity it achieved."
--Gary Hengstler, Frontier magazine (March-April 2002)