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WORD COUNT
662
APRIL 29, 2009
BASEBALL,
AND AMERICA LOSE A COMET – by Donald Kaul
Mark
Fidrych died last week. If you weren’t a baseball fan 30 years ago you
probably never heard of him. But if you were you remember him warmly. He
was not a star; he was a comet. He appeared virtually out of nowhere as
a 21-year-old rookie in 1976, lit up the sky for a year then flamed out,
never again to burn brightly.
A pitcher,
he was a stunning success that season---19 wins, 24 complete games,
rookie of the year, All-Star game starter, all for a Detroit team that
was moribund---but he was more than that. For that single season he was
baseball itself, the kind of baseball we played as kids, when we’d start
in the morning, play through the afternoon and evening (with lunch and
dinner breaks and changing lineups) until darkness forced us inside. It
was baseball played for the sheer love of it and for the fun.
Fidrych
epitomized that kind of baseball.
He bounded
around the mound like a hyperactive teenager, talking to the ball at
times, getting down on his knees to groom the pitcher’s mound at others.
And when the game ended and he’d won, he’d rush around the infield
shaking hands with his teammates, thanking them for their efforts on his
behalf.
They
called him “The Bird” after Sesame Street’s Big Bird, whom he resembled
but with a better fastball.
He filled
stadiums all over the American League; he was the first player routinely
called out of the dugout after games to take a curtain call. And he
always looked surprised and excited and delighted when he did it.
He was a
Ring Lardner character without any of the cynical overtones that were
Lardner’s trademark.
He hurt
his knee during spring training of his second season and it delayed his
return to play. But when he came back (too soon, I thought), he picked
up where he’d left off, pitching even more brilliantly than before.
Until one day in July in Baltimore. I happened to be there. His arm went
dead in mid-inning. You could see it. One moment he was pitching well,
the next he wasn’t. It was like watching a canoe turn over.
He never
pitched really well again. It turned out he’d torn the rotator cuff on
his pitching arm but they didn’t diagnose it for another 10 years, long
after he was done.
You might
think the curtailment of his career before he was able to cash in on his
remarkable talent might have soured him, but it didn’t. By all accounts
he never bemoaned his fate, never blamed the Baseball Gods. He continued
to feel lucky to have had that one magical season. That was his greatest
attribute, really, that talent for appreciating what was good in his
life rather than focusing on the missing pieces.
Compare
that attitude with so many professional athletes today---sullen,
unsmiling, ready to believe that everyone is against them---an attitude
that filters down to colleges and high schools. Kids don’t play games
for fun anymore. They play to prove they’re good enough to win a
scholarship or grab the professional brass ring. They get lessons, they
have coaches, they play in organized leagues in games supervised by
adults. They have organized practice, are told when to show up and when
to leave. They don’t have to develop a sense of fairness because they
have umpires and referees and, anyway, what does fairness have to do
with winning?
Fidrych
was the antithesis of all that. When he was the toast of baseball, they
asked him what else he’d like to do. “Drive a dump truck,” he said.
After his
retirement, he bought that dump truck and made his living with it. It is
indeed a bitter irony that he died in a freak accident involving the
truck. A friend, upon hearing of his death, said:
“There’s
one less smile in the world.” And the world poorer for it.
--
Don Kaul
is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-losing Washington correspondent who, by his
own account, is right more than he's wrong. Email:
dkaul2@earthlink.net -- A photo of Donald Kaul is available
CLICK HERE
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