Scarcely twenty fours ago my heart leapt into my throat when I learned that former major league pitcher Mark “The Bird” Fidrych had died.
Fidrych was killed in an accident on his farm in Northborough, Massachusetts (about 40 miles west of Boston) while working on his truck. In an instant, the music stopped for a unique American who sang his own tune.
By the time I became first immersed in baseball Fidrych’s career was coming to a close. But I certainly was aware of him and the mark he had made not only to major league baseball but to American pop culture. After all, it’s not every major league pitcher who poses for pictures with both Big Bird and The Chairman of the Board.
Mark Fidrych was as unlikely a candidate for baseball superstardom as anyone who had donned a major league uniform. While he had played baseball in high school he was not a particularly distinguished player although he enjoyed playing the game whether it was on the pitcher’s mound or catching fly balls in the outfield.
But on one fateful afternoon he caught the attention of a scout from the Detroit Tigers who saw him pitch. The Tigers selected him in the 10th round of the 1974 amateur draft as a pitcher. No one was more surprised than Fidrych himself who spent that summer pumping gas.
Yet when Fidrych reported to minor league camp he wasn’t married to the idea of being a pitcher. In a television interview that aired on WGN in 1985, Fidrych remarked that he wasn’t sure which group of players he was supposed to join on the field. He wasn’t sure if he should join the other pitchers, join the infielders because he could play shortstop or join the outfielders because he could play left field. His bewildered manager told Fidrych, “You’re a pitcher. Get over there.” ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxFFYNgVeCo )
Fidrych stuck with pitching and made the major league club as a non-roster invitee in 1976. But no one, including Fidrych, had any expectation of what was to come. The Tigers expected Fidrych to pitch in relief which in those days wasn’t such a great place to be for a pitcher. In the first month and a half of the season, Fidrych made only two appearances out of the bullpen until fate intervened. On May 15, 1976, when teammate Dave Roberts was unable to make a start due to the flu, Fidrych got the call and boy did he answer. Fidrych threw seven innings of no-hit ball against the Cleveland Indians and ended up giving up only two hits in a 2-1 complete game victory. Can anyone say Wally Pipp?
The 21-year-old right-hander almost instantaneously became the ace of the Tigers staff and made manager Ralph Houk’s job easier as he won game after game. Not only did he pitch well but he did things that had never been seen on a baseball diamond before and will likely never be seen again.
He appeared to be talking to the baseball as if to tell it what it should do. If he didn’t like what he heard from the baseball he would throw it back to the umpire and ask for a new ball. In between innings, he would double as a one man grounds crew manicuring the pitcher’s mound. After groundball outs it was not unusual for Fidrych to shake hands with his infielders. Did I mention that he bore a resemblance to a certain character from Sesame Street?
Combine these idiosyncrasies with an uncanny ability to win ball games not to mention thick locks of long, curly hair, a winning smile and a New England accent, people began gravitating back to the corner of Michigan and Woodward Avenues. After Houk assumed the managerial reins in 1974 the Tigers struggled. In 1975, the Tigers were the worst team in major league baseball losing 102 games. The Tigers were a long way from being a contender but with Fidrych virtually guaranteeing a victory when he pitched at least there was something to cheer about at Tiger Stadium.
As America approached its bicentennial, Fidrych emerged as a symbol of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. On June 28, 1976, millions watched Fidrych pitch a complete game victory over the New York Yankees at a sold out Tiger Stadium on ABC’s Monday Night Baseball. His pitching so enthralled the Detroit fans they would not leave their seats until The Bird came out to acknowledge his flock. The rest of the nation was equally captivated.
By this time, Fidrych was 8-1 with a miniscule 2.05 ERA (earned run average for the uninitiated). Less than two weeks later, Fidrych would be the American League’s starting pitcher in the All-Star Game in Philadelphia. Of course, the 1970s were the days when the National League dominated All-Star match ups and even Fidrych could not overcome that juggernaut. But that didn’t stop Annie Leibovitz from photographing him for the cover of Rolling Stone. Not bad for someone earning the major league minimum of $16,500 living in a modest Detroit apartment with no telephone.
The Detroit Tigers finished the 1976 season with a 74-87 record, 24 games behind the AL East and eventual American League champion New York Yankees. Fidrych was responsible for winning more than one quarter of their games finishing the season with a record of 19-9 and a 2.34 ERA, which was the best in the American League. He finished runner up in the balloting for the AL Cy Young Award to Jim Palmer of the Baltimore Orioles who would win his third Cy Young in four seasons. The Baseball Writers Association of America voted Fidrych as AL Rookie of the Year for 1976.
Here are three observations of Fidrych’s magical season. First, in 29 starts he completed 24 games. That will never happen again in major league baseball. Thirty years after Fidrych’s rookie season when the Tigers won the American League pennant in 2006 the entire Tigers starting rotation had three complete games. It is worth noting that on two occasions Fidrych pitched 11 innings in game and in one instance pitched 12 innings. In an era where starting pitchers are removed after 5 or 6 innings his pitching feats are unfathomable in Major League Baseball in the 21st Century.
Second, in 250 innings pitched, Fidrych struck out only 97 batters. In this day and age where top flight starting pitchers are expected to throw harder than 95 MPH and strike out more than 200 batters a season would Fidrych have even merited a look from scouts? Fidrych relied on groundballs to get his outs. No wonder he shook hands with his infielders.
Finally, because Fidrych had so few strikeouts, even fewer walks and lots of groundballs his games were fast paced. It was not unusual for a game that Fidrych started to be finished in less than two hours. In an era where fans complain because the games last three and sometimes four hours no wonder Fidrych was popular. Even on a weeknight, Fidrych’s games were short enough that Tigers fans could get back to Battle Creek or Farmington Hills in time to watch the local news without being afraid to be late for work the following morning. I would bet that even Fidrych’s extra inning outings didn’t take as long as some nine inning games between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees in recent years.
Of course, as we all know the reverie did not last. After signing a three-year contract with the Tigers worth $255,000 plus a $25,000 signing bonus, Fidrych tore cartilage in his knee during spring training in 1977 while shagging fly balls with teammate Rusty Staub. He rushed back too soon. By favoring his knee, he ended up injuring his shoulder and would never again ascend to the heights of success on the baseball diamond. Fidrych would pitch for the Tigers over the next three seasons before he was released following the 1980 season. After winning 19 games in 1976, The Bird only won 10 more big league games. He was 26 years old.
The Boston Red Sox took a chance on Fidrych in 1982 but he never made it past the Triple-A Pawtucket Red Sox. If Fidrych had pitched today he would have had rotator cuff surgery, sat out one season and been back as good as new. However, that medical technology had not yet been developed when Fidrych could have used it. It was only in 1985 that his shoulder injury was properly diagnosed and surgically corrected.
Invariably one might ask, “What could have been?” But if I had the sage wisdom of Yogi Berra I might say, “Nothing’s the same as it would have been.” Yet it doesn’t prevent some succumbing to the temptation of premature speculation. As Jim Caple of ESPN observed:
If the Bird pitched today we’d probably be so overexposed that we would soon grow sick of him, regarding his behavior as just another obnoxious “Look at me!” act. He would be fun at the start, but then he would date Britney Spears and wind up offending everyone by dumping her for Bristol Palin. But things were different back then. The summer of ’76 was long before nightly “SportsCenter” highlights, TMZ, the Internet, sports radio and our pervasive 24/7 sports culture. It was still the era of newspapers and four-minute sports reports on the local news.
( http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=caple/090414&sportCat=mlb )
Aside from an all too easy dig at Bristol Palin, Caple misses the point. Mark Fidrych did not take a left turn and end up with the Kardashians in Beverly Hills. The Bird did not need a reality TV series to justify his existence. He went back home to Massachusetts, bought a small farm, got married, helped raise a daughter and eventually became a licensed commercial truck driver hauling asphalt and concrete. On weekends, he would help out at his mother-in-law’s restaurant waiting tables. ( http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/articles/2009/04/14/mark_the_bird_fidrych_54_pitcher_entralled_fans/?page=2 ) Although Fidrych probably wouldn’t have minded doing a guest spot on Magnum P.I. he was as about as far removed from Hollywood or any kind of life in the fast lane as a famous person in America could be. While Fidrych could never be mistaken for an intellectual he knew that even the most gallant bird cannot fly forever. In that 1985 WGN interview, Fidrych remarked:
You gotta realize that game is still gonna go on without you because they have someone else right behind you and whenever you think you’ve got it made and, you know, that you’re irreplaceable you’re wrong because you find that out as soon as you’re gone.
Mark Fidrych might not have been irreplaceable as a baseball player but baseball will never see the likes of him again. He was truly a rare bird.
Aaron Goldstein
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