Mark the Bird Fidrych

It’s been a bad day for baseball, with the death this morning of legendary Phillies announcer Harry Kalas, and now the sudden passing of Mark Fidyrch. Fidyrch, who was only 54, was killed in an accident on his farm. I was 16 and a fanatic Tigers fan during the Bird’s brief flight across the national landscape. The Tigers were coming off the worst season in their history, and Fidyrch’s combination of brilliant pitching (158 adjusted ERA, not that we knew what that was back then) and totally unselfconscious antics — he talked to the ball before every pitch and had about 50 twitchy mannerisms that were all somehow endearing — remains one of my favorite baseball memories.

The Bird’s career was wrecked after just 35 starts by an undiagnosed torn rotator cuff, and a hard-headed analysis of his stats indicates he probably wasn’t destined for a Hall of Fame career — he only had 97 strikeouts in 250 innings in that magical rookie year. Still for a few months he was on top of the world, and somehow neither that experience nor his sudden fall seemed to have any affect on his personality, which appeared to remain immune to the contaminating power of fame.