A Bird on the Mound is Worth Two Under the Truck

Mark Fidrych, one of the great one-year wonders in major league baseball history, was strangled by the drive shaft of his dump truck in a small New England town at the age of 54, inspiring 4 Stephen King novels. The year was 1976. The Detroit Tigers were coming off a 102-loss season and having nothing to lose, called up a gangly 6-foot-3, 21-year-old kid nicknamed Bird after his resemblance to Big Bird. He made his major league debut on May 15 with a complete game win, carrying a no-hitter for 6 innings. More interesting were his eccentricities – talking to the ball in tight situations and getting on his hands and knees to pat down the mound before every inning. He completed his next game, a loss, then manager Ralph Houk decided bullpens were for sissies and sent him out for back-to-back 11-inning complete games. By this time Bird mania had set in, and every Fidrych start, home or away, drew 15,000-20,000 more fans than any other game. The Tigers drew as many for his 18 home starts as they did for their other 63 without him. The only thing bigger than Fidrych was the Bicentennial – he finished 19-9 with a 2.34 ERA with 24 complete games, winning the Rookie of the Year and finishing second in the Cy Young balloting. Along the way, he met his namesake on Sesame Street, dazzled the nation in a nationally televised win at Yankee Stadium, started the All-Star Game, was the first athlete on the cover of Rolling Stone and signed an endorsement deal with Aqua-Velva – ironic because he hadn’t started shaving yet. The modern bullpen hadn’t been invented yet, and all those innings in 1976 took their toll – after starting 29 games that year, he only started 27 more over the next 4 years and was out of major league baseball by 25 with what was eventually diagnosed as a torn rotator cuff.