If you watched a video on the history of the Detroit Tigers, and you blinked, you might have missed the brief role Mark Steven Fidrych played in baseball history.
Until Fidrych died April 13 in a freak accident, his name was not often heard or seen in the news. But long-time Detroit fans recall the single-season exploits of the pitcher they called “The Bird.”
Chicago attorney Michael H. Cramer has never forgotten the night of June 28, 1976. Then a 12-year-old resident of a Detroit suburb, he was one of 47,855 fans who attended a game between the Tigers and the New York Yankees.
Rookie Mark Fidrych was the starting pitcher, and the winning pitcher. His antics, captured on national television, included talking to baseballs, pacing around the pitcher’s mound, and smoothing the dirt with his hands.
Cramer and the rest of the crowd would not stop clapping and cheering until “The Bird” came out of the dugout and tipped his cap.
Fidrych finished the 1976 season with a 19-9 record and a 2.34 earned-run average, earning Rookie of the Year honors. His 24 complete games, more than today’s pitchers hope for in a career, included three consecutive 11-inning contests.
Injuries to his knee and shoulder, however, limited him to six wins in 1977 and two in 1978. He notched his last major league win on Oct. 1, 1980.
Thirty years later, Cramer had involved himself in a film project to pay tribute to his childhood hero, and to earn greater acclaim for him than his inclusion in the Shrine of the Eternals in Baseball Reliquary (see editor’s note).
He visited Fidrych in Worcester, Mass., in October 2006 with a filming crew for additional footage. He recalls the encounter as “a fantastic day” of baseball talk and reminiscences. At one point, Fidrych borrowed Cramer’s mitt to play catch with his son.
A rough cut of the film, “Dear Mr. Fidrych,” was completed in early April. Three hours after Cramer tried to inform Fidrych by e-mail that he would provide a DVD for review, he learned of the baseball legend’s tragic death.
A trucker, Fidrych was working under his 10-wheeler when his clothing became entangled with a spinning power shaft. He apparently suffocated. He was 54.
Cramer says the rough cut of “Dear Mr. Fidrych” needs some trimming, as well as sound and color correction, but he hopes to enter it in the Detroit-Windsor International Film Festival in late June.
The lead character, as well as the writer and director, Cramer also cast his sons and wife, Harlene Ellin, in some of the scenes. Chicago attorneys who appear are Margaret Ann Daley, Francis G. Libbe and William A. Lowry.
Perhaps the film will be shown in Chicago later this year. Fidrych’s only game with the White Sox in 1976 was a dominant five-hit, 3-1 victory in Detroit on Aug. 25 that took only an hour and 48 minutes.
An artist in several media, when not billing hours at the labor and employment law firm of Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, Cramer contributed cartoons to the ISBA Bar News in the 1990s.
A 1988 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, he is a past president of the Coordinated Advice and Referral Program for Legal Services (CARPLS) and the Around the Coyote Arts Festival.
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Editor’s note: Since 1999, the Baseball Reliquary each year has honored three individuals who have altered the baseball world through good or bad play, or unique character and personality.
In addition to Mark Fidrych, the 33 honorees include Emmett Ashford, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Minnie Minoso, Jimmy Piersall and Bill Veeck. For a complete list, access