If you were living in Michigan, and old enough to remember the summer of 1976, you will never forget it. As is often the case, the Detroit Tigers did not have a very good team that year. In fact, it would have been completely forgetable, if not for one man: Mark "The Bird" Fidrych.
I only saw Mark pitch once in person. He was making one of his many comeback attempts, as he pitched one game of a double header at Tiger Stadium on the day that the Tigers retired Al Kaline's number 6. It wasn't a great day for baseball, but the atmosphere was festive all the same. Most of the people had come to celebrate the career of Kaline, but we were all excited and hopeful that Fidrych would finally break through and become once again what he was in 1976. Unfortunately, things like that don't often happen in real life.
I teared up last night when I heard the news of Fidrych's death. I wasn't sure why until I started to remember what that summer of '76 was like in Detroit, and what it was like to be 17 years old with not a care in the world, waiting to start my senior year of high school, and wishing that the 4 years left until I turned 21 would go by quickly. They did, but those 4 years didn't go by as fast as the years from 21 to 50.
R.I.P. Mark Fidrych. Thanks for the memrories.
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Good blog, TGRFAN. I was eight that summer of '76, and it was the first year I really followed baseball and paid attention to it. The All-Star game that year was the first AS Game I ever watched and it was the first time I saw Fidrych. I immediately became a fan, and was disappointed by the various failed comeback attempts.
Baseball needed him and it was far too short of a career for him.
RIP.
TenRingsSTL
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