I'm sort of surprised at how choked up I am at the passing of someone I never met, and who I've barely thought of over the last 20 years.
In 1976, an eleven year old in the Detroit area who was obsessed with sports had nothing successful to root for. The Red Wings sucked, the Pistons were horrible, the Lions were the Lions, and only one season separated the Tigers from a last place finish and what was then the longest losing streak in baseball history--19 straight losses.
Then there was The Bird: Mark Fidrych. Drafted in the late rounds, never expected to be a major league starting pitcher, Fidrych barely made a weak Tiger's team. He didn't start until mid-May, but his first start in the majors, as a 21 year old rookie, was a 2 hitter. Within a few months, he was a national phenomenon.
Mark Fidrych was a variation on the old Will Rogers saying "I never met a man I didn't like." There wasn't anyone who didn't like Mark Fidrych. The Bird--his nickname because he was gawky, had curly yellow hair and reminded many of Big Bird--talked to the ball before he threw it, urging it to get past the batter without getting hit. He got down on his hands and knees before every inning and moved the dirt around near the pitching rubber. He pranced around, talked to the crowd, and loved every single second of his fame. He had his own "personal catcher," Bruce Kimm. The Tigers probably averaged 18,000 fans at Tiger stadium that season, except the nights when the Bird pitched, when the crowds were always 51,000 sellouts. Back when there was still Monday night baseball, he beat the Yankees--during their Reggie-era three-straight Series streak--on national TV, and anyone in America who knew anything about baseball, and plenty who didn't, had heard of the Bird. And everyone loved him.
He was also a remarkable pitcher. That rookie season he put up stats I still remember: he went 19-9 for a bad Tigers team, his 2.34 ERA was the best in the league, he won the American League rookie of the year award, started the All Star game, and finished second--to this then-eleven year old, he was robbed--in the voting for the AL Cy Young award.
And that was it. He was pretty much done.
The next season, he injured his knee, and when he came back, he eventually injured his shoulder. He was never the same. He won only ten more games for the rest of his career.
As a kid entering adolescence, it was one of those lessons of how capricious life and success can be. It didn't seem fair. But every time Mark Fidrych came back to Detroit--and he was loved for his love of the fans and for providing such unabashed joy on the field and wherever people saw him--he seemed happy. He never seemed to be bitter that he didn't have an extended career. There was probably never an autograph he didn't sign, a hand extended that he didn't shake, a smile that he didn't return. He seemed to be genuinely humbled that for one glorious season, he was one of the most famous people in America, he got paid to play baseball, and he was loved.
Today, Mark Fidrych was found dead on his farm in his hometown of Northborough, MA, apparently a victim of an accident.
A few years ago, in a comment thread, Kossack ablington mentioned that the only times her husband had cried was at their birth of their (then only) child, and "When Ted Williams and other assorted geezer were wheeled out into the infield during the All Star game in Boston (1998-ish?)". In a later comment, she speculated that it might be "the whole 'Circle of Life' thing" that makes men "misty" when emotional about sports.
It's probably a bit of that. But I think it's also that for a lot of boys, at least when I was growing up, nothing in life outside their family was so important, evoked more emotion and hope and dreams of grandeur than sports. All the other Detroit and Michigan teams that I loved as a child--other than, of course, the Lions--have won championships in my adulthood; the Tigers won the World Series. I became a basketball fan because of Magic and the 1979 Spartan's NCAA win over the other Bird and Indiana State. The Pistons have won three championships, the Wings four of the last eleven Stanley Cups, even the University of Michigan's football team--reason for so many bowl game heartbreaks as a kid--won a national championship.
But that sense of passionate longing, the memories of my entire family sitting around our color TV on a Monday night in July and knowing that the whole country could watch something in my otherwise dreary home town, of cheering on one of the most irrepressible, joyful and endearing celebrities of my lifetime, those are now memories of my childhood, and the memories are still there, but so much else is gone. My grandparents, with whom my mom and I lived during my childhood, were sitting in that living room, and they've been gone for a long time, but I still miss them desperately. I miss the joy of unabashed fun with few responsibilities in life. And I I miss the simplicity of caring about few things other than my family, my friends and the next game pitched by Mark Fidrych.