Daniel Bard

Daniel Bard's story is one of the most genuinely moving in recent baseball history. He came up with the Red Sox throwing absolute gas — we're talking 100-plus mph — and looked like a future closer, then got hit by the yips so severely that he walked off the mound one day and essentially disappeared for seven years. Seven years. Most pitchers never come back from something like that, and most people would've quietly moved on, but Bard kept grinding in the minors and independent leagues until the Rockies gave him one more shot in 2020. He didn't just survive — he became their full-time closer, won the NL Comeback Player of the Year, and stuck around through 2023. That kind of mental resilience is rarer than any fastball.

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Name (English)

Daniel Bard

Name (Japanese)

ダニエル・バード

Reading

だにえる・ばーど

Born

June 25, 1985 (age 41)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Cancer / Ox

Origin

Houston, Texas, United States

Height

193 cm

Occupation

baseball player

University

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Awards & achievements

• 2020 Major League Baseball Comeback Player of the Year Award

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel%20Bard
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%80%E3%83%8B%E3%82%A8%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BB%E3%83%90%E3%83%BC%E3%83%89
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1049715

Tags

• Texas
• baseball player

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.