It's been a tough day for baseball fans of a certain age. We've lost a voice and now we've lost a ... well, a personality.
As noted here on Da Box earlier, legendary Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas passed away early yesterday; later in the day, we learned that 1976 A.L. Rookie of the Year Mark "The Bird" Fidrych was found dead under a pickup truck at his home, in what is being reported as an apparent farming accident.
Bear with me here ...
... but certain players really make an impression on you when you're young. The Bird took flight during the American Bicentennial summer (1976), the year I turned 10, living just an hour or so from Detroit and even closer to their AAA city, Toledo. Fidrych was so clearly and obviously going to be a Hall of Fame pitcher -- clear and obvious to my ten-year-old eyes, anyway -- that it was a privilege watching him pitch.
More than that, it was fun watching the Bird pitch. Even those of you born well after he retired following an aborted comeback with the Red Sox probably know the stories ... Bird talking to the baseball, stomping around the field, manicuring the mound, refusing to use a baseball that had just been hit safely by an opposing batter ... there were too many quirks to count.
And for the first time in a half-decade, there were just about too many fans to count at Tiger games, too. Complete game win after complete game win, starter of the All-Star Game that summer ... Bird didn't break camp with the Tigers, who were coming off a horrendous 100+-loss 1975, but was in Tiger Stadium by early summer, winning 19 of his 29 starts, and completing a league-leading 24. He also led the league in ERA and ERA+. It was a hell of a rookie season. And again, more than anything, it was pure, unadulterated fun. Fun to watch the kid pitch, fun to think about what greatness lay ahead.
The vagaries of baseball, of course, can have different ideas about what lay ahead. The clear and obvious Hall of Fame path was quickly derailed -- headline writers in the midwest hurt themselves with the cleverness of their "injured wing" puns -- and he won just 10 more times for the Motor City Kitties, and none for anyone else.
By 1980, the Bird was gone from competitive baseball. Now, and this is painful to write, he is gone for good from our midst. But while he was here, if too briefly, the Bird tasted what it was like -- again, if ever so briefly -- to step out on a big league mound and be the best pitcher in baseball. I know I'd take that.
Fly free, Bird.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20090414004331744