Remembering Mark

Pitchers have forever taken their position on that mound, 60' and 6" away from home plate. They have always taken their signs and gone to the stretch on that small piece of rubber, atop the hill.

Ernie Harwell described it the way that it was. There were times when a foul ball was captured by a gentleman from Saginaw, and there were other times when the batter stood there like the house by the side of the road.

That is the way that I grew to love baseball. It was the background to my summers. When we played ball in the yard, ball was also on the radio. Many a firefly was captured in a glass jar during Ernie's flavored commentary, and I won't even bother to mention the carnage that Ernie might have witnessed could he have seen out of his radio during june bug season when we were carrying our ping pong paddles. At family reunions, the radio was as much a part of the table setting as was the potato salad. In the early years we all had a favorite player. Nothing hurt a neighborhood kid more than the suffering caused by the retirement or trade of a "favorite player."

Slowly and imperceptively the sounds of baseball became interwoven with my overall memory of summer. It was never overpowering. It was subtle. Baseball was a game not relegated to the background, but a game that thrived at the fringe of my senses, much like any horizon sits just beyond life's hills.

And then came the summer of 1976. That was the summer of "The Bird" and the summer when baseball needed to be watched instead of just listened to.

Suddenly, Ernie was not enough. He could not adequately describe the antics of Mark Fidrych on the mound. The Bird talked to the baseball. He would run to and from the mound he famously groomed. He would strut and pump his fist. He kept the ball low and he worked fast, pitching in many games that lasted barely over two hours. And yet, he did all of this while being so self dismissive that he didn't even notice that his actions were not unnoticed. That was so much of his charm. His inadvertent showmanship was tempered by an all healing genuineness.

On those rare occasions when a Mark Fidrych game happened to be televised, the radio remained silent and ignored, an unwanted relic of a game that had passed it by. Sadly, injury sidelined Mark after that huge 19-9 rookie season and despite attempts to return, he never regained his dominance.

Last summer during a Tiger telecast from Boston, Mark Fidrych spent a half inning in the booth with the current Tiger's television broadcast team of Mario Impemba and Rod Allen. It was apparent that he had not changed a bit during the thirty years or so since his leaving the game.

He still loved baseball and loved Detroit. He remained thankful for the opportunity that he had to play in the majors, realizing a dream that any other kid I knew growing up would have done anything to experience.

Even after all those years had expired The Bird was simply grateful that baseball had been able to take him along for that one glorious ride, still seemingly unaware that he was the person that had carried baseball for that magical season and consequently, had hauled me excitedly along with it.

There really are few things as sweet as a fond childhood memory.

Thank you Mark. You will be greatly missed.