Thoughts Out Of My Head: More Baseball Passings

Two more passings related to Major League Baseball happened recently, with Mark 'The Bird' Fidrych and Harry Kalas leaving us on Monday.

Fidrych captured the imagination of the country with his antics for the Detroit Tigers during his rookie season in 1976. 'The Bird' taked to the baseball and raked the dirt around the pitchers mound with his hands on his way to Rookie of the Year honors. Fidrych also started the All-Star game his rookie season.

Kalas had been the voice of the Phillies since the 1970's, but was also involved with NFL films, and for some time the Campbell's soup commercials. He threw out the first pitch in the Phillies home opener last week, the same day of their World Series celebration. Kalas was able to call the last out of last year's Phillies World Series win in what turned out to be his final postseason game.

Fidrych was found dead near his Massachusetts home, while Kalas was found passed out in the broadcast booth before the Philadelphia Phillies game against the Nationals in Washington. He died hours later in a Washington area hospital.

My dad, who grew up in Detroit, sent me this email the other day with some of his thoughts on Fidrych -

"One of my favorite things to remember about the Tigers when I was growing up was 1976 & 'The Bird' pitching. He sold out stadiums all over the country when he pitched. He was on the late shows, he was on magazine covers, on T-Shirts. There was an article in the Detroit Free Press or Detroit News every day about him, whether he was pitching or not.

I remember my dad telling me and my brother that the Tigers were gonna bring up this rookie. The boys were pretty bad at the time, but Trammell and Whitaker, Jack Morris and Lance Parrish were all just about ready to come up. Some of the '68 Tigers who won the World Series were still hanging on to the end of their careers back then. It was probably April & pop said that there was this kid down in Toledo playing for the Mud Hens that talks to the baseball and manicures the dirt on the mound with his hands before each inning. He said he heard the kid was pretty good, but super fun to watch & that if he came up, we would go get tickets to watch him pitch just for the fun of it.

That never happened, because all the tickets sold out after his first start. He had a no hitter going into the 8th, I think. I'm pretty sure it was on National TV - Saturday Game of the Week - this was back before ESPN or Cable or Satellite. Man, EVERYBODY watched the Game of the Week.

Might have been the only game you got to watch on TV. Fidrych won 19 games that year - I think Vida Blue from Oakland won the Cy Young with 20 and the whole country thought 'The Bird' got robbed. He won 19 games on a team that lost 90 games, while Blue won 20 for a doggone division winner. Anyway, he started the All-Star Game and won Rookie of the Year, too.

Wish you could have watched that guy pitch. He was like a little kid in a candy store when he played. When a guy would make a really good play to end an inning, he would run out to him and slap him on the butt and jump up and down like a little leager. Like he just loved being there. Never one like him before, never one like him after."

Fidrych fizzled out after a few years, the victim of arm trouble in a time before today's medicine. He finished his short career appearing in 58 games, pitching 412 innings, a 3.10 ERA, and 170 strike outs.

As ESPN's Tim Kurkjian stated, Fidrych will always be "the most remembered pitcher with a 29-19 career record."