RIP: Mark 'The Bird' Fidrych, 54

"The Bird" also gave us one great SI cover.

 

One of my last baseball heroes, a guy my age who really seemed to enjoy playing and just being a ballplayer. I remember watching that Tigers-Yankees game, it was amazing how many peolle fell in love with him and how he turned baseball on its ear that summer.

I got his autograph in Des Moines in 1981, during the strike, when he was pitching for Evansville at the very end of his career. It's on the back of a Skoal can that is date stamped with my birthday.

RIP, to someone who helped me love baseball.

 

Man. He pitched in the first MLB game I ever went to.

 

Pretty big update to the AP story...not a pickup, but a dump truck.

It said he owned a trucking company, but that doesn't seem like the kind of work someone should be doing at home.

RIP.

 

I have the original broadcast of that game on DVD. One of the commentators, I forget who (Warner Wolf?), said the Tigers averaged 20,000 or so more at Tiger Stadium when Fidrych pitched, compared with the other four starters.

The crowd went nuts when he finished that game. And this was in June!

(Not for nothing, but this one was broadcast two hours after I was born. So that game has some special meaning to me).

What a shame. Between him and Kalas, this has been a dark Monday.

 

I hope he died doing something he loved.

 

One of the very first players I remember hearing about from my Dad...I think it was when he was trying to come back with the Red Sox in the early 80s. Dad would tell me about how he'd act like the Bird and I loved the footage of Fidrych stalking around the mound.

It always seemed, like Starman says, that Fidrych had a pretty good grasp on the fleeting nature of his fame and was a good sport about it instead of being embittered by it.

When we heard about Kalas, I said to my wife "That's two baseball deaths in a week, these things happen in three. Who's next?" I guess it was the Bird. RIP.

 

Tremendous loss.
Grew up the next town over from me.
I saw him pitch last in a minor league game against Dave Righetti, who was rehabbing in Columbus.
This is a bad day for baseball.

 

His trucking 'company' consisted of a single truck, according to a profile I saw several years ago.

 

My grandmother lost her first husband that way.

 

Watched him pitch when I was a kid... damn.. .