Every Wednesday, The Athletic’s MLB writers will be looking at a key what-if scenario from baseball’s history. This week: What would have happened if Mark “The Bird” Fidrych hadn’t battled injuries?
The Summer of The Bird still resonates with baseball fans of a certain age. It was 1976 when the zany pitcher who spoke to baseballs and captured the heart of Detroit went 19-9 with a 2.34 ERA, a rookie sensation who was must-watch material every time he stepped on the mound.
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Part of the greatness of Mark “The Bird” Fidrych, of course, is the fact that his star burned so bright and glowed for only a short time. In spring training of 1977, right when he was primed to become the best pitcher in baseball, Fidrych tore cartilage in his knee. By July of that season, six weeks after returning from injury, Fidrych felt his arm go dead. He pitched for parts of the 1978, ’79 and ’80 seasons, but he was never the same. He became one of the most storied one-hit wonders in the world of sports.
But … what if Mark “The Bird” Fidrych never got hurt?
The mania
In 1979, The Washington Post asked Fidrych if he was entering a make-or-break season. Fidrych was beginning his third comeback from what at the time were mysterious arm woes.
The right wing that fooled so many hitters and mesmerized so many fans in 1976 had simply stopped working. Fidrych’s insistence on zooming back from the injured list as soon as possible did not improve the prognosis.
“I’ve already made it,” Fidrych said that day.
Boy, was he right. The magical summer of ’76 was like tuning in to a weekly television drama that kept you wanting more. Fidrych threw 11-plus-inning complete games on four occasions. The 21-year-old who looked like Big Bird pitched 250 1/3 innings, going the distance 24 times. He became a pop icon after he twirled a complete game against the Yankees in an hour and 51 minutes on national television. That night, fans refused to leave the jam-packed Tiger Stadium until Fidrych emerged from the dugout for a curtain call. Fidrych’s postgame interview was full of quirks and quips befitting of a pitcher who shoveled dirt around with his hands every time he went out to the pitcher’s mound. He made the cover of Rolling Stone, a baseball player turned into a Beatle.
He started the All-Star Game, led baseball with his 2.34 ERA and earned American League Rookie of the Year honors.
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Safe to say that one summer cemented his place in baseball lore.
Mark Fidrych in 1976. (Bettmann Collection / Getty Images)The injury
It was spring training of 1977 when the curly-haired-kid-turned-megastar was shagging fly balls in the outfield. Always a bundle of nervous energy, Fidrych was known for having a hard time keeping still, for always being on the go, for not exactly taking extreme precautions with his body. Before a March 21 exhibition game against the Expos, Fidrych zoomed across the outfield to catch a ball, jumping up to complete the play. He landed and felt a pain shoot through his left knee. Legend has it Fidrych shook it off and completed his running exercises with teammates later in the day.
Eventually, The Bird was examined and told to rest. The pain subsided, and Fidrych went back to work. Then he felt the pain again. Then a pop.
Fidrych tore cartilage in his left knee and underwent exploratory surgery on March 31. He was supposed to miss six weeks, but Fidrych was back on the mound on May 27. He threw a complete game against the Mariners, though the Tigers lost 2-1.
Fidrych eventually posted six consecutive victories as spring turned to summer all over again. But on July 12 against the Blue Jays at Tiger Stadium, Fidrych started feeling pain and left the game after 15 pitches. This time it was in his pitching shoulder. Over the years, there has been speculation Fidrych had altered his delivery to compensate for his knee injury. Perhaps that led to what happened with his arm.
The injury was mysterious at first. Maybe tendinitis, maybe the vague but foreboding term “dead arm.” It wasn’t until 1985 that Fidrych was actually diagnosed with a torn rotator cuff.
Fidrych tried and failed to regain his form from 1977 to 1980. His comeback attempt included a stint in Triple A before the Tigers released him in 1981. In 1982, Fidrych pitched in the Red Sox farm system. By June of 1983, after he posted a 9.68 ERA in 12 minor-league games, The Bird announced his retirement through a statement released by the Red Sox.
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In the newspapers the next day, Pawtucket Red Sox manager Tony Torchia eulogized Fidrych’s career.
“As much as you love things sometimes, eventually you have to let it go,” Torchia said. “What it boiled down to was his arm just never got it back. All I told him was, ‘You may not have been a great pitcher in terms of longevity, but for one year, you had baseball in the palm of your hand.’
“I think he realizes he’s made a real mark on our game. The best way to look at him is as a brief breath of fresh air in our national pastime.”
The ‘What if?’
Perhaps, even if the knee stayed healthy, Fidrych’s arm was always due to give out. He worked a heavy load of innings. He was more Greg Maddux than Roger Clemens, his game founded on control and deception. Even in 1976, Fidrych struck out only 3.5 batters per nine innings. He was a finesse pitcher with a sinker that was clocked at 93 mph. He threw a hard slider and a good changeup. He induced groundballs and puzzled hitters with his natural late movement. But overall, Fidrych’s profile lends itself to short bursts of dominance yet rarely leads to long and glorious careers.
If we are truly to guess, it seems unlikely Fidrych would have become an all-time great. But even if he wouldn’t have been a lock for the Hall of Fame, there’s no doubting Fidrych had what it took to be an established major-league pitcher.
Had Fidrych stayed healthy, maybe the Tigers would have had another brilliant rotation piece as they rose to success in the 1980s. Maybe Detroit could have reached the pinnacle of the baseball world a tad earlier, in 1983. Maybe the World Series championship team of 1984 would have been even more dominant. Maybe the 1987 Tigers would have beat the Twins in the ALCS after all.
Hard, though, to imagine what Mark Fidrych would have been like 10 years into his career. Could he still be his zany self? Would all the lights and attention finally diminish his wide-eyed ways? It’s even fair to ask how having a player such as Fidrych would have impacted how the Tigers constructed their rotations of the 1980s and how it might have impacted the developmental arcs of young pitchers such as Jack Morris or Dan Petry.
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But isn’t it nice to imagine The Summer of The Bird becoming an annual bash?
If Fidrych could have somehow continued his dominance and staged a Hall of Fame career, maybe he could have been the best Tigers pitcher of all time. Detroit’s pitching history includes stars whose longevity was also limited in players such as Schoolboy Rowe, Hal Newhouser and Denny McLain. Jack Morris and Justin Verlander would spend parts of their careers with other teams. But had Fidrych remained a Tiger, he could have eclipsed Hooks Dauss’ franchise record of 223 wins. He could have been part of one World Series team and maybe helped the Tigers to at least one more. He just might have become the most popular Tiger of all time, an eccentric complement to Ty Cobb’s “terrible beauty” and Al Kaline’s polished grace.
Then again, maybe some questions are best left unanswered. Fidrych lived with his wife on a farm in his hometown of Northborough, Mass., after his playing career. He hauled gravel and asphalt in a big truck for a living and helped out at his mother-in-law’s diner.
He died in 2009 at age 54 in a tragic accident, found dead underneath a truck he had been working on.
The wild and weird summer of 1976 was always part of Fidrych’s mystique and appeal. There’s a sadness to the Mark Fidrych story despite all its warm memories. A career cut short. A life ended too soon. But what we remember most about Fidrych is that one summer. What if that’s enough?
In 1999, he told The Boston Globe: “I got a great life now. I got a family, I got a house, I got a dog. I would like my career to have been longer, but you can’t look back. You have to look to the future.”
(Top photo: Herb Scharfman / Sports Imagery / Getty Images)
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