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Healthy Greg Bird Can Become All-Star Force for Yankees in 2017

Justin K. Aller/Getty Images

The day Greg Bird hit his first two spring training home runs for the New York Yankees, he told reporters that this spring “just feels like baseball.”

“It’s awesome,” Bird said, according to Dan Martin of the New York Post.

You’d say that, too, if you were back playing baseball after a year’s forced absence, the result of a torn right shoulder labrum that required surgery. You’d be pretty excited to swing a bat again and to prove you still can.

Bird still can. He always could, which is why his career slugging percentage in the minor leagues (.