Fidrych at Tiger Stadium, 1976.
The famous blue and orange seats
were installed the next season.
June 28, 1976, 50 years ago: America -- at least, that part of it outside the Detroit area -- gets its first good look at Mark Fidrych, on ABC Monday Night Baseball.
He took the American League by storm in 1976, and when he pitched, the Detroit Tigers, then an awful team in a suffering city, went from an average attendance of 14,000 at already-creaky Tiger Stadium to 40,000. His start on on June 28, in front of 47,855 paying customers, was a national phenomenon, and he beat the soon-to-be-Pennant-winning New York Yankees, 5-1.
He went the distance, advancing to 8-1 on the season, allowing 1 run on 7 hits. He only struck out 2 batters, but he didn't walk any. The only Yankee run came in the top of the 2nd inning, a home run by Elrod Hendricks, who was catching that day due to an injury to Thurman Munson.
The Tigers scored 2 in the 1st. Their other storybook player, the speedy ex-con Ron LeFlore, led off with a walk, and Rusty Staub hit a home run off Ken Holtzman. It was still only 2-1 Detroit into the 7th, when Aurelio Rodríguez homered. The Tigers iced the game with 2 runs in the 8th.
It wasn't just that he was talented. He was also a big character. He tried to explain that he would talk to himself on the mound, saying things like, "Settle down, you're getting too nervous." But somehow, it incorrectly got around that he was "talking to the ball," telling it where he wanted it to go, where in and around the strike zone, or, after being hit, to which fielder. He would smooth out the mound. He would walk over to an infielder who'd made a great play and shake his hand.
You see, in baseball, which has so often been culturally behind the times -- the world's 1970s were baseball's "Sixties" -- this was considered weird. What's wrong with thanking your fielder for making a great play, or fixing the mound the way you want it?
Fidrych finished the season 19-9. In all other games, the Tigers were 53-78. He led the AL with a 2.34 earned run average (ERA), and started for it in the All-Star Game at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, although he ended up as the losing pitcher. He was named the AL's Rookie of the Year, but finished 2nd in the Cy Young Award voting, to Jim Palmer of the Baltimore Orioles, who went 22-13 with a 2.51 ERA.
Fidrych was just 21 years old, from Northborough, Massachusetts, a town of 14,000 people, an hour's drive west of Boston, and he was as amazed by his sudden fame as anyone else. He seemed both goofy and cool at the same time. A Massachusetts "Park ya cah" accent, so often sounding obnoxious from some guys, sounded charming (or "chahming") coming from him. After the season, he dictated a quickie autobiography to sportswriter Tom Clark, choosing the title No Big Deal.
For all of this, he was making what was then the major league minimum salary of $19,000, although, through bonuses, the Tigers bumped it to $60,000.
In Spring Training the next season, Fidrych, known as "the Bird" because his curly blond hair reminded someone of the Sesame Street character Big Bird -- hurt his knee. Trying to favor it, he hurt his shoulder, tearing his rotator cuff. He wasn't the first pitcher to cause a new injury by favoring an old one, but he may have been the most costly. At least when Dizzy Dean, a great character from an earlier era of baseball, hurt his arm by changing his motion to favor a bad toe, he was at his peak, and had already (if just barely) won enough games to make the Hall of Fame. Fidrych was still near the beginning of his career.
The amazing thing is -- forgive me if this sounds like a Yogi Berra line -- when he could pitch, he could still pitch. He had a nine-strikeout, no-walk 2-1 win over the Yankees in that 1977 season. But he couldn't pitch without pain often enough, and that was his last season of any productiveness. After 1980, he was done, a nobody at 21, a superstar at 22, a has-been at 24.
The amazing thing about Fidrych is that he didn't look at his career as tragic. Even though he got hurt and left baseball before salaries really took off, he had the attitude of, "So what? It's not the end of the world. I've got another life." And for about 30 years, he did have another life, running a farm and a gas station in Northborough. He married in 1986, and had a daughter. He thought it was a good life, and who are we to doubt him?
Still, he accepted that baseball fans liked him, and participated in memorabilia shows, old-timers' games, the Tiger Stadium finale in 1999, things like that. I know this is going to sound like another Yogi-ism -- so what, Yogi was a character, too -- but it was good that the good things that happened to him happened to him.
Fidrych at the Tiger Stadium finale in 1999
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