Former Baltimore Orioles infielder Bobby Grich knows he would not have had the career he did had it not been for Brooks Robinson.
Grich credits Robinson for his successful career as an infielder. Grich, a six-time All-Star who hit 224 home runs throughout a 17-year career, is known as one of the best defensive second basemen ever by both traditional and advanced metrics.
“Had I come up with another organization or studied another player, I would not have been as good a player as I was,” Grich said on Glenn Clark Radio Sept. 27. “I got my total jump [on the ball] from Brooks Robinson. I played at 6-foot-2, 200 pounds. I wasn’t a small, short, quick guy.”
Grich played for the Orioles from 1970-1976, overlapping with Robinson. Grich studied Robinson’s defensive play, specifically how the 16-time Gold Glover started his feet close together to get a better jump on a batted ball.
“I developed the jump of Brooks Robinson, and there’s nobody that had any better range than I had … and that was because of what I learned from Brooks Robinson,” Grich said.
Grich learned a lot from Robinson on the field. He recalled that Robinson used to have bruises all over because he would use his body to stop the ball after the second hop and record the out.
“He would just get down, almost his knees to the ground, and sacrifice his body, and put his arms out a little bit to make himself as big as possible,” Grich said. “And he would take shots off his quads, off his stomach, off of his shoulders, off of his chest, and he had this soft body. About June or July, midway through the season, he had taken so many balls off his body, and he bruised really easy. … He would have between three and five bruises on his body — like these ugly purple things — all the time.”
Coming up to the majors on a team that included Frank Robinson, Boog Powell, Jim Palmer and other Oriole greats, Grich said it was Robinson whose humility and kindness made it a welcoming environment.
“I was a 20-year-old kid in [1969] and I went to spring training for the first time, and I was in Miami,” Grich said. “Brooksie was just low key, he was just friendly. There were no errors about him. He made me feel welcome right away. He never played the big league card on anybody. He was just an easygoing guy.”
Grich said that if you talked to Robinson, you would not have been able to know he was a star ballplayer because he was so humble. Another aspect of Robinson that Grich admired and modeled after was how Robinson always made time to sign autographs for fans.
Grich recalled that Robinson used to have a box that all of the autograph requests would go in. He remembers a woman sorting everything and putting it into the box, and Robinson would sign and return everything to the fans.
“There was nobody ever that signed more autographs than Brooks Robinson signed,” Grich said. “I patterned myself after him as much as I could. I loved the fact that he signed autographs. I absolutely loved that. I signed autographs all the time because of Brooks Robinson’s model.”
Robinson’s impact on and off the field is what earned him the nickname “Mr. Oriole.” It’s what made Grich and other players want to model themselves after Robinson.
“The standard that he set, I tried to uphold as best I could,” Grich said.
For more from Grich, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Baltimore Orioles