Remembering "The Bird" ...

Mark Fidrych, who was once the toast of baseball, died last week in an accident on his farm. He was 54 years old. Very few baseball fans below the age of 40 will remember much about him, and it's a shame that he came along at least a generation too soon, both in terms of his health and his potential stardom.

Fidrych, for the uninitiated, was a nut. He talked to the baseball on the mound. His gawky frame and bushy hair earned him the nickname "The Bird," after "Big Bird" of "Sesame Street" fame.

And for one wonderful season, Fidrych was the biggest thing in baseball. In 1976, he was bigger than both the suddenly-resurgent New York Yankees (and the budding love-hate relationship between George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin) and the Big Red Machine. Bigger than the new thing called "free agency" and the debate over the four-year old designated hitter rule.

Fidrych was the real thing. He went 19-9 for a Detroit Tigers team that went 74-87 and led the league with a 2.34 ERA. And all this at age 21, less than two years after he was picked in Major League Baseball's amateur draft.

The next season, his career took a far different turn. He was pitching well again before his arm started hurting, and he never got it back. By 1981, he was out of baseball, his wonderful right arm shot and in way too much pain to pitch for anyone.

Knowing what we know now, Fidrych was destined to crash and burn. He pitched 250 innings at 21 years old — and all of them after May 1. He threw 24 complete games and worked 10 or more innings a whopping five times. He worked 11 innings (11 innings!) four times, once in back-to-back starts.

In retrospect, it's amazing that Fidrych's arm stayed attached to his body.

Pitch counts didn't exist then — the first time I ever heard of them was when Tommy Lasorda was working Fernando Valenzuela like a dog in the early 1980s — and no one realized what Detroit manager Ralph Houk (a well-respected baseball man) was doing to Fidrych's arm.

As a result, baseball fans were robbed of one of the game's biggest and brightest — and most deliciously interesting — stars.

Rest in peace, Mark ...