I Had Completely Forgotten About Mark "The Bird" Fidrych!

like this guy?

http://www.georgesstamps.com/sports/Autographed_Cards/Phillies_1982/Bake_McBride_1982.jpg

http://www.alhrabosky.com/

Apparently he's a broadcaster now??

http://www.alhrabosky.com/tempimg/images/alhrabosky/1971topf.jpg
http://www.alhrabosky.com/tempimg/images/alhrabosky/1981topf.jpg

i am positive that jim mcmahon made the cover of rolling stone in 1986, during the heyday of the chicago bears.

the ron leflore movie was not very good though.

ROLLIE FINGERS

http://www.alhrabosky.com/tempimg/images/alhrabosky/MVC-073F.JPG

The "bad boy"-era Detroit Pistons were definitely on the cover of Rolling Stone. The year of their first championship, I think - 1989. I think I still have that issue back at my mom's house. I think the cover had like Bill Laimbeer and Dennis Rodman in black leather gloves or something like that.

Here is a great old SI cover (I mentioned this on Rockist's baseball book thread) - Dick Allen juggling and smoking a cigarette!!

http://i.cnn.net/si/si_online/covers/images/1972/0612_large.jpg

http://i7.ebayimg.com/02/i/01/ea/16/a2_1.JPG

And sometimes I say things I shouldn't
Like . . . [harmonica solo and end of song]

-- Warren Zevon, "Bill Lee"

what about EDDIE "THE EAGLE" EDWARDS?
http://www.celebritymate.co.uk/eddie.jpg
yeeeeeeeahhhhhhh

RIP :, (

Definitely one of the funnest things about being a teenager in suburban Detroit in the bicentenntial summer of '76.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/sports/baseball/14fidrych.html?hpw

A-well-a everybody's heard about the bird
B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a don't you know about the bird?
Well, everybody knows that the bird is the word!
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word

54, too damn young.

r.i.p.

1976 was the first year i paid any attention to baseball, i was 6. i remember my dad talking about the bird, and he was sort of the perfect ballplayer for a 6-yr-old to latch onto. i was always disappointed he fell apart after that (i suppose not as disappointed as he was). if sports medicine had been better then, he might've rescued his career.

This is fantastic--stick around for the whole thing. Anyone else watching that night?

http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=4137207

Oh, I sure was. And yeah, that took me back -- amazing.

The only baseball card I still have from my teenage collection.

I didn't notice this the first time, but when he shakes the umpire's hand at 1:10, it's the umpire who initiates that. You should have gotten out to the park that night, xhuxk.

I've got a card too, Jon--bought it a few years ago, though.

Unfortunately mine's the card from the year after his big year but w/e

Had no idea this came out in March (or even that it existed):

http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/wilson.jpg

Finally got around to reading the biography above. The writer captures the incredible hysteria of '76 well--I still feel lucky to have witnessed that. There are a few too many quotes throughout the book from people saying the same thing: that Fidrych was 100% genuine, the same person with everyone and at all points of his life. The years kicking around the minors are genuinely sad, even if Fidrych puts up a brave front.

One thing the book cleared up for me--or maybe it's more accurate to say created doubt about--is the cause of Fidrych's arm trouble. Somewhere along the way I forgot the exact circumstances and began to internalize the obvious conclusion, that the Tigers pitched him into the ground during his rookie year. He got his first start on May 15 (a CG two-hitter), and he proceeded to throw 24 complete games for the year and 250 innings. No pitch counts then, but he strung together a couple of runs that were inexplicable by today's standards: e.g., from August 7 to August 29 he threw consecutive starts of 9, 9, 9, 10, 9, and 11.1 innings. (Mostly low-hit and low-walk affairs, but in the 10-inning game he gave up 12 hits, two walks, and seven runs.) He was 21 years old. Couldn't be more simple.

But it all started with a knee injury when he was fooling around the next spring shagging flies. After some time on the DL, he comes back fine for a few starts, then his arm goes dead in a July 4th start against the Orioles. And that's it--he's never the same again. Maybe--maybe--there was some adjustment he tried to make coming back from the knee injury that led to the dead arm, rather than simply all those CG in '76. The book doesn't say for sure. Probably a combination: Fidrych's workload wasn't different from Seaver's or Blue's or Blyleven's at the same age, but you could say the same of Gary Nolan's or Frank Tanana's or Steve Busby's--works both ways. In any case, I'm less sure now that it was just the workload. And as tipsy points out, today the arm would have been diagnosed and attended to properly--a few years later they figured out it was the rotator cuff, at a point where it didn't matter anymore.