Boy, was ex-Tigers pitcher ever flamboyant and fun

The kid came out of the manager's office squawking and flapping and scratched across the floor to the pay phone.

"Got a dime?"

The clubhouse attendant handed him a dime. Mark Fidrych dialed a number in Massachusetts.

Collect!

"Mom, Dad, I made it."

You could hear him all across the Tigers' spring training clubhouse in Lakeland.

The date was April 6, 1976. Ralph Houk, the Tigers' manager, had moments earlier summoned Fidrych into his office at Marchant Field. Houk told him he was going north with the Tigers to pitch in the major leagues.

"It's not every day a kid makes it," Fidrych said to me when he finished his phone call.

"I'm one in a million.

"I tell you, man, it's the rush of my life. I'll never have a high like it. I went to stand up and I shook so much I couldn't stand."

That was how it started, the baseball season in Detroit, 33 years ago. Before the season ended, Mark "The Bird" Fidrych would become a national celebrity.

He would win 19 games, become the starting pitcher in our nation's bicentennial year All-Star Game, be voted rookie of the year. He would chat about baseball with the President of the United States, Gerald Ford. He would be featured in LIFE magazine and TIME and Newsweek. Journalists from across America would fly to Detroit to interview Fidrych, this young phenomenon who talked to baseballs and screeched around the pitcher's mound, flattening the dirt.

A sensation

With curly blond hair that hung below his cap with the Olde English D and a perpetual grin and non-stop chatter, he would become the object of affection for a mob of young ladies.

He told me stories about how he might be stopped at a red light, in his car, and fend off propositions from a female stopped in the adjoining lane. He told me once, how down in Lakeland, he and a lady friend climbed over the left-field fence at Marchant Stadium, into the darkness. There he and his friend walked to the pitcher's mound -- and well, it was another episode in the short, sweet saga of Mark Fidrych.

Mark Fidrych was fun -- always -- when he pitched, when he talked with his wild gestures, even when his career was aborted so quickly after he gained his fame. He was carefree and loyal, a Tiger forever. It became his habit to buy season tickets for the Tigers and hand them out to friends in Detroit.

The memories are so vivid and to be cherished, starting from the day he borrowed the dime.

Some of those cherished, personal memories:

The game was on national TV and Mark Fidrych beat the Yankees in Tiger Stadium.

"We want The Bird, we want The Bird."

In the grandstands 48,000 screamed and chanted. They cheered and cheered.

"Wow, it was like Tom Jones or something," Fidrych said in the clubhouse.

It was June 28, 1976, a Monday night. Fidrych was 8-1 and talking to baseballs.

"You got a lot of things going for you now, don't you, Mark?" somebody said.

"Well, my car is still going good," said Fidrych.

In Detroit, you could buy Mark Fidrych T-shirts and Mark Fidrych bumper stickers. You could watch Mark Fidrych TV specials. A dozen magazines reported on his antics. The ballpark was filled to capacity every time he pitched.

"I want to be the same Mark Fidrych who came into this game," he said.

More smiles

It was July 4, 1976 -- and he was 9-1. He was asked if he ever had a high to compare with the hysterics at the ballpark.

"Yeah," he said, "when I got my first mini-bike. I paid for it myself from caddying."

The tall man entered the AL clubhouse before the All-Star Game in Philadelphia. It was July 13, 1976.

"The Bird," said the visitor.

"I thought we had a game to play," Fidrych responded.

He turned around and glanced at the man he had just brushed off.

"Did you send me a thing in Texas?" Fidrych asked, repeating the conversation for me.

"I tried to call you," the man said.

"Yeah, yeah," said Fidrych. "Where's your son? I'd like to talk to him."

"He's around," the man said. "Now, don't talk to these young fellows. Talk to the old man."

"OK," said Fidrych. "I was just wondering how he was doing with those dates."

"You come to Washington, he'll fix you up," said the man.

"I may do that," said Fidrych, standing to shake hands with President Ford.

A group of Fidrych's friends entered the disco in Northborough, Mass. The music blared. Fidrych and his friends dropped onto their backs and wiggled across the dance floor in time to the music.

"It's a dance we invented," Fidrych said. "It's called the Fried Egg."

The phone rang in the house in Northborough.

"Mark," said Jim Campbell, president of the Tigers. "I'm sorry, we've put you on waivers. If nobody claims you, we're going to have to give you your unconditional release."

The date was Oct. 5, 1981.

Mark Fidrych, former major league pitcher, career too brief, loved to putter with tractors and things with engines. He went out from his farmhouse in Northborough, apparently to work on an engine. He was found dead beneath the vehicle.

Like his baseball career, Mark Fidrych's life ended far too early. He was just 54. The date was April 13, 2009.

Tom Gage