But there are a couple of baseball players I sincerely admire, as much for their character as their achievements. This is about one of them.
You had to be living in Detroit in 1976 to fully appreciate the impact that Mark Fidrych had on the Tigers when he made his first major league start in mid-May. (And he only got that start because the scheduled starter was down with the flu.) He threw a complete game 2-1 victory, not yielding the first of his two hits until the eighth inning.
He would go on to win 19 games and lead the league with a 2.34 ERA. He was also named the starting pitcher in the All Star Game and Rookie of the Year and came in second in voting for the Cy Young Award,
What really captivated fans, though, was his boyish enthusiasm. The gangly 21 year old who was nicknamed The Bird because of his uncanny resemblance to the Big Bird character on Sesame Street was everyone's inner child suddenly transported to center stage. He talked to the baseball. He crouched down and manicured the mound at the start of each inning. He cheered like a madman at the plays his fielders made to back him up. By the time he led the Tigers to a win over the Yankees in a nationally televised game in late June, he had fans from coast to coast.
He was a genuine goofball. I remember watching an interview when he was asked what he wanted more than anything else. After pondering the question, he said he'd always wanted to own a dump truck.
1976 was the Year of the Bird. The Tigers gave him a $25,000 bonus after the season ended and signed him to a three-year contract worth $255,000. Given that the minimum salary for Major League Baseball was around $35,000 then (it's now about $410,000), this was a significant raise but less than an astronomical one.
Alas, 1976 was also pretty much the extent of The Bird's career. He tore knee cartilage during
Spring Training in 1977. Six weeks into the season, he felt his arm go dead. That injury wouldn't be diagnosed as a torn rotator cuff and repaired until 1985, five years after he'd reluctantly retired. During the 1977-1980 seasons, he compiled a 10-10 record.
But the fans remembered him. He'd frequently be stopped by strangers back home in Massachusetts and asked for his autograph. When fans would offer condolences for his ill fortune, he'd admonish them. What was there to be sorry about? He'd fulfilled his dream of pitching in the major leagues. He'd then gone home and married the girl he loved. They had a nice home and a lovely daughter. He had a successful business that he enjoyed. And strangers frequently stopped him to shake his hand. What more could a person ask out of life?
The last time I saw Mark Fidrych was during the ceremonies following the last game in Tiger Stadium at the end of the 1999 season. Retired players in uniform trotted out one by one from the center field gate to their old positions. I thought nothing would surpass the acclaim that greeted Al Kaline emerging and headed for right field (known as Kaline's Corner in Tiger Stadium), but I was wrong. When Fidrych sprinted onto the field and ran to the mound at full bore, the fans erupted into cries of Bird! Bird! Bird!
He squatted down, pulled empty plastic bags from his uniform pocket, and began filling them with dirt from the mound. When questioned about this later, he said that an awful lot of people had helped him make it to the Major Leagues and that he wanted to share with them mementos of his career. The dirt would be part of those mementos.
I hope the mementos got constructed and shared before Fidrych's untimely death on April 13, 2009. Working on repairs beneath one of his company's 10 wheel dump trucks, his clothes got ensnared in a spinning take-off shaft and suffocated him.
Thinking back to his brief but meteoric career, I can't help thinking about the ghost-written autobiography that came out after that 1976 season. It's a typical spur-of-the-moment cash-in-on-the-moment book, not really worth the effort of reading. But the title is pure Bird: No Big Deal.
Rest in peace, Mark Fidrych. You and your enthusiasm and your humility were a very big deal for me. Your head was screwed on pretty well.
"Sometimes I get lazy and let the dishes stack up, but they don't stack too high. I've only got four dishes."
