Mark "the Bird" Fidrych Found Dead

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4065778

 

What a shame

What a fun guy to watch play the game..so sad.

 

Very much so. On his knees smoothing the mound or talking to the ball--Major League Baseball misses that type of color nowadays

 

A summer of fun

In an era before ESPN, most people saw very little of Mark Fidyrch, but in the summer of ’76, if you lived in Michigan, The Bird was the word and what a trilling ride it was. The Tiger Television network carried most of his starts.

As a 21 year old rookie, he would win 19 games with an era under 2.5 and won the ROY in the American League. He filled Tiger Stadium game after game that season, a year after the Tigers were the worst team in baseball.

There was a 2-1 victory over Reggie Jackson and the mighty Yankees on “Monday Night Baseball.”

The memories come flowing back . . . Going to the Legion state playoffs and getting shut out by a kid who had assumed all of Fidrych’s antics 1-0 and he was not a very good pitcher at all, but he two hit us that day and knocked us out of the tournament.


The next year in Mr. Fred’s math class listing to an opening day win and sadly learning a few weeks later that he would be out for most of the season with a knee injury, and the following season his arm goes.

Fidyrch would win only 9 more games after that 1977 season opener and be out of the majors by age 25, but my guess is that he was the most famous 29 game winner in MLB history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/sports/baseball/14thebird.html?ref=baseball

 

memorable

24 complete games 30+ years ago?? wow , unheard of now.

Baseball is a great game, it's history dotted with characters like the Bird.

 

The rest of the story?

I believe he hurt his leg jumping over a 3 foot fence at Marchant Stadium in Lakeland. He didn't want to walk all the way around it. Then (they say) he hurt his shoulder compensating for his knee.