RIP: Mark 'The Bird' Fidrych, 54

http://wbztv.com/local/mark.Fidrych.dies.2.983934.html

The first "major league" athlete I ever interviewed, in a little roadside bar in Michigan. He bought me a beer, while he had two.

It was a couple years before the song "Glory Days" came out, but I always thought of The Bird whenever I heard that song. Not that he himself was stuck in the past -- he seemed to have come to grips with it reasonably well -- but just that fame, itself, is so fleeting.

 

Holy fucking shit.

 

Wow. This day is getting worse and worse...

 

That's so damn sad.

 

C'mon ....

Damn. So many memories.

RIP.

 

You can say that again.

Just watched the '76 Yanks-Tigers national telecast on MLB Network the other day ... RIP.

 

Damn. RIP.

 

Man, that sucks.

RIP, Bird.

 

I know it's been said before, but this is when you start to feel old, and realize, yet again, that we're all getting closer to our own 'RIP'...

Mark is just a year older than my own baseball idol, Robin Yount, and is the same age as my mom. Kind of brings it home.

As I said on the Kalas thread, it will be tough when Ueck goes. It will also be a tough day when my childhood idols, such as Yount, James Lofton and Terry Cummings, go as well...

Days like today make it feel like those times could be coming sooner than I'd like.

 

What does that mean, 'under a pickup truck'?

Horrible. RIP to a true legend, way too soon.

 

Interesting Fidrych interview from 1985.