The Bird

I never got to see Mark Fidrych pitch. I wasn't quite 3 years old when he burst onto the scene, and I didn't get into baseball until 1981, the year after Fidrych toed the rubber for the last time in the majors. So I'm a little surprised at how effected I've been by his passing.

I never got to see Mark Fidrych pitch, and yet I feel like I did when my boyhood idol, Walter Payton, died. While I watched virtually every play of the tail end of Sweetness' exceptional career, my most enduring early memory of Fidrych is being unable to ascertain if he and Larry Bird were the same person. Seriously. I knew of a gangly ex-pitcher who was nicknamed The Bird, and then there's a similarly-gangly and identically-permed guy on the Celtics with 'Bird' on the back of the jersey, and I honestly thought, Maybe he plays basketball now instead of pitching.

I never got to see Mark Fidrych pitch, but he still had an enormous impact on my baseball fandom. I would see old clips of him -- usually on This Week in Baseball, I think -- and be totally mesmerized by his coolness. I was an overly-self-conscious kid, and here was this guy who clearly didn't give a shit what anyone thought of him. And it wasn't even Screw you, I'm a big-league pitcher, I can do whatever I want; I don't think The Bird ever once considered how someone else would view his eccentricities. Or that people would even notice for that matter. Which made him something entirely unique. He was so secure that he could just be himself, be a true individual, in a game that lionizes conformity. How fucking cool was that?

I never got to see Mark Fidrych pitch, but there is no doubt he was a true legend of my youth. His imprint on baseball survived deep into the 80's, and in those succeeding years any time a player showed some quirkiness -- like, for instance, flaky Cubs' hurler Steve Trout -- the Bird comparisons were inevitable. But none of the others ever had even a thimbleful of Fidrych's overflowing carefree awesomeness. Or his ability.

I never got to see Mark Fidrych pitch, and it's mostly because he pitched far too much at far too young an age. Which tragically turned him into the very definition of flash in the pan -- think Mark Prior, only with effervescence and charisma instead of robotic indifference. And if what Dusty Baker did to Prior's golden arm was abusive, I don't even know how to classify what Tigers' manager Ralph Houk did. Under Houk's not-so-watchful eye, in the first 13 starts of his career Fidrych recorded 12 complete games -- three of them 11 innings -- and totaled 120.1 IP. Pitch counts are not available for that era, but The Bird faced 464 batters in that span, and even if we take a very conservative 3.5 pitches per plate appearance, he would have thrown 125 pitches per start. At 3.8 pitches/PA -- last year's average -- that number climbs to 136. Either way, I think it's safe to assume that he routinely topped the 140 pitch mark. In his Age 21 season. Fidrych's career was like a sugar fix, and it was all just such a waste, and so upsetting as a fan of the game.

I never got to see Mark Fidrych pitch, and now his life has ended way too soon, just like his playing days. The Bird should have been pitching well into the 90's, let alone the 80's, but instead he made just 27 starts after his sensational rookie year in 1976. Rather than captivating kids from multiple generations, his all-to-brief career meant that only a precious few were able to call The Bird their own. Thousands of ballplayers have come and gone since Fidrych made his debut, but how many of them have made such an indelible impression on the public consciousness? How many had virtually everybody rooting for them, even the opposing team's fans? The Bird was such an extraordinary character, so likeable and so talented, that it's doubtful we will ever see anything even remotely resembling him again.

All of which makes me overwhelmingly sad that I never got to see Mark Fidrych pitch.