8

Pawtucket

“You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”

—Jim Bouton, Ball Four

Mark Fidrych refused to give up on his baseball career. He consulted the Red Sox’s team doctor, Arthur Pappas, an orthopedic specialist at the nearby University of Massachusetts in Worcester. Pappas later stated that when he first examined Mark, the right shoulder was wrapped tighter than a watch spring. The arm would not stretch fully in any direction. The five years of overcompensation, using muscles that weren’t meant to be used, had taken its toll. “It was excessive compensation,” said Pappas. “And it was the worst case I’ve ever seen. The first thing we had to do was teach him to use his shoulder again. Not to pitch. Just to use his shoulder.” Pappas gave him a regimen of stretching and other exercises to do on a daily basis. By midwinter he was throwing without pain again. Red Sox coach Walt Hriniak and catcher Rich Gedman, who also lived in Worcester, caught Mark over the winter and could see potential. Mark signed a minor league contract with Pawtucket, the Red Sox Triple-A team, and reported to the Red Sox camp in Winter Haven.

It helped that the Red Sox manager by then was none other than Ralph Houk. “If he was going to come back, I would have hated to see him do it with someone else,” Houk told reporters that spring. “Naturally, I’m a strong believer in Mark. I felt if anyone could do it, he’s the type. I told him I didn’t expect him to show me anything, to just come on down and continue the rehabilitation. I think he felt I wouldn’t exploit him.” Houk later said that, if the experiment worked, in a few months general managers all over the league would be calling him to juggle his rotation so The Bird could pitch in their parks.

After arriving in Winter Haven, Mark showed that he could still draw crowds of fans and writers. He told reporters that he had bought thirty hogs and become a pig farmer after being cut by Detroit. When the Red Sox called with an offer to give it another try, “I fed the hogs and packed my bags.” He told them he had been working on his old knuckleball, which might relieve some of the stress on his arm. He said he missed the excitement of baseball. “Feed thirty hogs on a farm twice a day, 365 days a year, and you get a different perspective on the good life of a major leaguer.”

Mark worked out in Winter Haven under the careful eye of Dr. Pappas, staying behind and continuing the rehab regimen after the Red Sox headed north. He slowly gained strength, and his arm felt pretty good when he joined the Pawtucket team in mid-May. He was on a minor league contract, making minor league money—$18,000 a year—a far cry from the $133,000 he made his last year in Detroit. He joined the mix of young players on the way up, eagerly awaiting their chance at the majors, and a lesser number of older players on their way down, holding on to the hope of one more shot. None of his teammates or opponents had reached the heights Mark Fidrych had. None of his teammates had a Rookie of the Year award at home. No one else in the league had ever appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone.

Despite being in the minor leagues, Pawtucket held some attraction for Mark. Since it was barely an hour’s drive from Northboro, he was able to spend a lot of time at home, and family and friends were able to regularly attend his games. He often dropped in on his father’s sixth-grade class to play with the kids and pass out PawSox tickets. His visits were always a hit with the kids, who would look out the class window, spy him coming up the walk, and shout, “Mark’s here again.”

Despite the years, Mark’s name was still popular with fans and he remained a major drawing card. On May 23, nearly 9,000 fans came to Pawtucket’s McCoy Stadium for his first start. It was the largest crowd in the forty-year history of the stadium. Mark pitched five and two-thirds innings of respectable ball and didn’t seem to have any pain in his arm. Manager Joe Morgan lifted him with two outs in the sixth because he wanted to let the standing-room-only crowd mark the occasion with an ovation.

The next day, Mark showed up at the park at 7:30 AM before a Sunday afternoon game to work out. The owner of the PawSox, Ben Mondor, was stunned to see him there and opened the gate to let him in. Mark then ran, did his exercises, and lifted weights alone for several hours. Realizing this was his last chance, he was doing everything possible to make sure he was prepared. But the season became a struggle to find consistency.

No longer possessing lightning in his right arm, Mark was forced to rely on his brain to keep hitters off-balance, but it was not easy. Whatever it was that had robbed the arm of its ability to throw 90-mile-per-hour heat had also taken his two most valuable assets with it: the precision control and the movement on the ball. Paradoxically, he threw slower but had less control. Some nights there was very little left in the arm and he was hit hard by the minor leaguers. Other nights a combination of guile, wits, and will seemed to propel him to get just enough outs to escape. Whatever the result, he was still able to generate energy in the minor league parks with the fans, home or on the road.

“I can’t think of anyone who affected the gate the way Mark Fidrych did,” said Jim Weber, Toledo’s longtime radio voice, in 2000. “There’s not anyone close—he is the hands-down winner. He pitched in Toledo twice when he was with Pawtucket. Those were two of the largest crowds in the history of the stadium, and there weren’t any giveaways or freebies either. There wasn’t an open seat anywhere. He never changed his ways—he still was jumping over the lines, talking to the ball, and patting the mound.”

In mid-June 8,236 fans showed up in Toledo to watch Mark’s scheduled start. It was sixty miles and six years away from his rookie season in Detroit, but the northwestern Ohio and southern Michigan fans had not forgotten. Mark took the field for warm-ups to a thunderous welcome. He pitched six innings to get the win, 6–2, his first victory with Pawtucket, and basked in a standing ovation en route to the clubhouse in the seventh inning. An hour after the game, a couple hundred fans still stood outside the clubhouse, chanting, “We want The Bird.” Mark was informed that there was another door he could sneak out to avoid the crowd, but he said, “No, I owe a lot to these people. The fans have stuck with me. I appreciate that a lot.” He walked out of the clubhouse and plunged into the crowd, signing autographs for forty-five minutes.

As always, Mark was popular with his teammates because of his attitude and personality. “His enthusiasm and fun made coming to the park something to look forward to every day,” said one Pawtucket player. He was both an instigator and frequent target of clubhouse pranks. All of his teammates had heard of him and were not sure what to expect prior to the season. “He was a competitor on the mound,” says pitcher Keith MacWhorter. “He was totally focused on throwing the ball. It didn’t matter if there were two people in the stands or thousands, he was the same. I had thought it was an act when he was in the major leagues, but when I saw him from the bench in Pawtucket I realized that was just his personality. He was 100 percent pure and genuine. Also, he was the type of guy who was always there for you, always ready to do anything for you. If you needed a ride somewhere or something like that, Mark was always that guy. He was a good teammate. And he was a fun guy to be around.

“To be honest, by the time he got to Pawtucket, his arm was gone,” continues MacWhorter. “I think the Red Sox knew he couldn’t throw anymore, but he kept hoping he could make it back to the majors, that his arm would come back. Of course, it never did, but he was still a great guy to have around and the fans loved to watch him.”

“If we had an All-Good Guy team, he (Mark Fidrych) would be on it,” PawSox official Lou Schwechheimer later said. “He had a green Mercury Marquis when he was playing here. After a game, he’d sit on the hood of that car and sign autographs until the last fan left. I remember coming in early one Sunday morning, about 7:45. The Bird was sitting on the hood of his car—whistling. I asked him, ‘What are you doing here at this hour?’ He smiled and said, ‘I’m just waiting for someone to open the ballpark.’”

*   *   *

There was just a little bit of magic left in that right arm; enough for one more unforgettable night. On July 1, Mark started against Dave Righetti in Pawtucket. Righetti had been the Rookie of the Year in the American League for the Yankees in 1981, but had struggled in 1982. The Yankees had sent him to their Triple-A Columbus team for a couple of starts to get straightened out. Mark Fidrych entered the game with a 2–3 record and had not pitched a complete-game victory in over a year. The matchup between the two pitchers was only announced a few days before the game, but the media quickly fanned the flames. Cars were packed around the stadium by six o’clock for the 7:30 game. A crowd of 9,389 squeezed into the 5,800-seat stadium. Included in the crowd were 124 media members, representing almost every paper from Boston to New York. Pictures of Mark shaking hands with Righetti had been quickly printed and were being gobbled up for two bucks each. Fans in the old stadium were normally close to the action and seemed to be on top of the players, but with this crowd the feeling was magnified. In anticipation of the sellout, temporary bleachers had been brought in. Fans crowded into a roped-off section outside the right-field foul line and stood two deep in the aisles. Mark warmed up within five feet of fans down the right-field foul line and chatted with them. “You gotta love it,” he said to pitching coach Mike Roarke. “You have to get pumped up with something like this.” The fans, media, and players, no matter how pumped up, could not have anticipated the spectacle they were about to see.

In front of the thunderous crowd, Righetti, anxious to return to New York, blew away the Pawtucket hitters to start the game, striking out the first five batters and six of the first seven. Righetti, who would pitch a no-hitter at Yankee Stadium soon after, threw smoke for six innings, striking out twelve. He left the game satisfied with a 5–3 lead. Mark Fidrych doggedly tried to stay to the end. Like an aging boxer, he survived on guts and know-how, by bobbing and weaving, feinting and jabbing. He grudgingly absorbed body blows but managed to avoid the knockout punch. A two-run homer in the sixth, followed by two run-scoring singles in the seventh, put him on the ropes, however. “About the seventh inning, he was in a jam,” manager Joe Morgan later recalled. Morgan considered taking him out, but “I said to myself, ‘We’ve got this crowd, this big mob here, and they came to see this duel.’” Morgan decided to give Mark just a few more batters. The next hitter stroked a base hit to the outfield, but the runner was thrown out at the plate, and another runner was gunned down trying to advance. The unlikely double play got Mark out of the inning and kept him in the game.

Pawtucket, seemingly inspired, clawed back with four runs in their next two at-bats, and Mark sprinted out of the dugout holding a 7–5 lead in the ninth inning. Visibly worked up, he fidgeted on the mound and pulled on the bill of his cap. His first warm-up pitch sailed to the backstop. The crowd, already packed on top of the field, seemed to surge closer and rose to their feat screaming. In the PawSox dugout, Joe Morgan, determined to win the game, had a reliever warming up and thought to himself, “One guy gets on base and he’s gone.”

The first Columbus batter of the ninth grounded out to second baseman Marty Barrett. Mark rushed across the infield and shook Barrett’s hand. The fans, sensing something special, began chanting Mark’s name. Suddenly, it was 1976 again. “Mark was actually timed at 90 miles per hour that last inning,” says MacWhorter. “And he hadn’t been able to reach 82 before.” Mark struck out the next batter, then, with two outs, faced Butch Hobson. A dangerous hitter, Hobson had just been sent down by the Yankees. He had hit twenty-eight home runs for the Red Sox in 1979 and had touched Mark for a run-scoring hit earlier in the evening. Hobson took a huge swing at the first pitch and missed. The second pitch was low for a ball, followed by a slider for a swinging strike two. The crowd was delirious. Mark assumed his familiar stance on the mound, focusing on the plate. He reached back for one last pitch. As he released the ball, he threw with such effort that his foot slipped on the follow-through. He spun a three-quarters turn to the left and went to a knee, his hat falling off. The pitch was on the low edge of the strike zone. Hobson swung and missed, and the park exploded. Mark grabbed his hat, jumped with both hands straight up in the air, and then ran around the field shaking hands with every teammate, waiting behind the mound to catch the outfielders as they came in. Amid the increasing roar of the crowd, the Pawtucket players swarmed Mark just like, well, just like he was back in Detroit in that magical summer of long ago. As they headed for the clubhouse, the crowd stayed on its feet and got even louder. The other Pawtucket players looked with awe at the stands. They were unsure how to react—they had never seen a crowd like this, but Mark Fidrych had been here before; he knew what to do.

“When it was over, the fans wouldn’t leave,” said general manager Tamburro. “When he walked off the field, everybody was standing and applauding. Even after he went into the clubhouse, the crowd stayed on its feet, cheering. After a few minutes, he went back onto the field and tipped his cap. The place went nuts.”

Mark bathed in the cheers of “Bird, Bird, Bird.” When he faced the bleachers and raised his clenched fists like Rocky, the stands ignited like Dad’s Fourth of July grill doused with lighter fluid. “The scene after the game was like out of a movie,” said Tamburro.

“I get gooseflesh even now just thinking about that moment,” says MacWhorter. “I’ve been to World Series games, but nothing in baseball affected me as much as being in that moment. I actually had tears in my eyes watching that last inning. We all knew he had worked so hard and this meant so much to him.” In 1990, Keith MacWhorter was asked to write about his most memorable moment in professional baseball for the Providence Journal. He picked that moment. He wrote that “the baseball gods made their presence felt.” Mark Fidrych threw in that last inning “as if he were being rewarded with one final moment of glory after six years of unsuccessful comeback attempts.” It would be the last time Mark Fidrych would ever hear the rapturous cheers of fans at the end of a baseball game.

*   *   *

Mark finished the season with Pawtucket, compiling a 6–8 record with an ERA of 4.98 in twenty games. He had some good games and some bad games, but he never again came close to the heights that he reached with the Righetti duel. He filled McCoy Stadium with every appearance—over 8,000 each time—not 50,000 as in Detroit, but a packed stadium nevertheless. Pawtucket general manager Mike Tamburro later reflected on Mark’s ability to fill stadiums: “When he got to us in late June, every place he pitched in the league was a sellout. Six years after his great year he was still selling out minor league parks.”

During the winter, Mark continued to work with Dr. Pappas five days a week. The work wasn’t all physical. “He was tremendously depressed,” Pappas said later. “Obviously, you can’t go through that range of high to low without that. I saw Mark five or six times a week, just spending time, trying to discuss his arm.”

Mark arrived early to Winter Haven in February of 1983, determined to make the major league club. But it was soon obvious that his arm had other ideas. Finally seeming to accept that his arm would never allow a return to his status of 1976, Mark talked of just being able to find a role—any role—to help the team.

Players still talked of the old Bird to reporters in camp, as if discussing a dead relative. “Forget all that bull, all that stuff he did on the hill,” Carl Yastrzemski told them. “He just came at you, and at you, and at you. If he wasn’t overpowering, he was damned close to it. He had this zone between the shins and the lower thighs, and he never missed it.” Unspoken was the unfortunate reality that the old Bird was a thing of the past, never to be seen again.

Mark talked reflectively to a reporter that spring. “He (God) gave it to me. He took it away. Now He’s given it back. He said to me, ‘Hey, you’re goin’ too fast, buddy. You’ve got to slow down … just slow down and look at what you have in life.’ … Someone sent me something that really hit me a few years ago. It was a story about how you’re walkin’ along and there’s four footsteps, yours and His, then there’s suddenly only two, and you say to God, ‘Where’d You go?’ But it turns out the two footsteps are His. He’s carrying you. See? I relate to that.”

Players and coaches were cautiously optimistic. “The thing about Mark is that if he makes it, it wouldn’t be good only for the Red Sox, but it’d be good for all of baseball,” said Red Sox pitching coach Lee Stange. “Everybody is pulling for the guy; everybody loves him.”

But as the spring progressed it became painfully clear to everyone that he would not make it back. In his third outing, against the Mets, Mark was hit hard, giving up five runs in two innings. After the game, Rusty Staub, who had a run-scoring hit for the Mets in the first inning, told reporters, “I didn’t even want to get my bleeping hit off him. That’s the way I feel about Mark. I had a real love for the kid. There was something special about him from the start. I’d been in the fishbowl, too, so I knew what he was going through. It was such a shame. You’d ask him if his knee hurt, and of course a kid is going to say no. So he just kept going out there, and eventually I guess everything went akilter.”

Other major leaguers seemed to be rooting for Mark. Tom Seaver and Jim Kaat spent time going over mechanics with him and offered tips. But it was a struggle. Mark’s fastball was timed at just 73 miles per hour.

After the Mets game, Mark was returned to the Pawtucket club. He voiced optimism to reporters: “I have no doubts whatsoever that I will be back.”

“He just wasn’t the same pitcher in 1982 and 1983,” says Ralph Houk with a touch of sadness. “The arm just wasn’t close to what it had been. The life wasn’t there anymore. I loved that kid. I would have done anything for him. It really was hard to let him go.”

Back at Pawtucket for the 1983 season, Mark was slated for middle relief. “I’m just glad to get this chance,” he told a television interviewer after his first game, in which he gave up three runs in three innings. “It’s like Gates Brown told me—I’ve known the top and I’ve known the bottom, and how many guys ever get to say that? I figure it’s made a better person of me.”

While he may have been a better person, he was a much worse pitcher. He had a hard time in 1983, becoming the eleventh man on an eleven-man minor league staff. “His control just wasn’t consistent,” pitching coach Roarke later said. “But he never blamed anybody except himself. If somebody told him that a guy walked because an umpire missed a pitch, he’d say, ‘I shouldn’t have been in that situation.’ Or if somebody made an error behind him when he had a one-run lead, he’d say, ‘I had a one-run lead. I should’ve kept that one-run lead.’ And he didn’t dwell on the past. I never heard him feel sorry for himself that his arm went bad.”

Mark was just hanging on. He was beginning to realize that, despite all the effort and optimism, his arm was not going to come around. Gone forever were the carefree days of setting the league on fire, of goofing off in the back of the Tiger bus with friends, of dominating opposing hitters. “It’s still baseball,” he told a television reporter. “It’s still played the same way. You lose your pride, but at least you’re still playing baseball.”

“You could see the disappointment in Mark,” his sister Carol said. “He felt like he was letting his fans down.”

“It was frustrating because you were going into battle without all your weapons,” Mark later said of trying to win at Pawtucket with a bad arm.

“Everybody in the organization wanted him to come back,” says Roger Weaver, a teammate at both Evansville and Pawtucket. “But it was painfully obvious he didn’t have it anymore. He was very candid with teammates about it. No one worked harder than Mark; he trained more intensely and worked on his pitching more than anyone in the organization.”

“He was one of the hardest-working and most team-oriented players in the organization,” 1983 manager Tony Torchia said.

Mark Fidrych knew the end was coming. “When I left the Tigers,” he later said, “one thing Mr. Campbell told me was ‘Mark, I know you’re probably gonna try and play somewhere else, but don’t end up being a Triple-A player. Don’t end up bumming around the minors for five years.” Mark loved baseball. He wanted to continue pitching forever. He later said, “My father always said that if you can find a job that you like to do, consider yourself lucky.” Mark had always considered himself lucky to be in professional baseball. He kept hoping his arm would get better; kept hanging on to a small thread of hope that somehow it would bounce back. One night, talking over a beer with teammate Keith MacWhorter, who was also nearing the end, Mark asked, “How do you know when you’re all done?” MacWhorter answered, “The hitters will tell you when you’re done.” With a 2–5 record and an ERA of 9.68 in twelve games, Mark was getting a not-so-subtle message from the hitters. On June 28, he was called into manager Tony Torchia’s office for the conversation every professional player knows is coming but still dreads. The club needed space on the roster to make room for pitcher Brian Denman, who was coming off the disabled list. Mark was the obvious choice to go. He voluntarily retired on June 29, 1983, rather than face the indignity of being cut. It was finally over.

After the game, he remarked to reporters, “I told someone that I probably would go over to the mall and get a lunch pail.” Then, it was time to break the news to his family.

“Mark called and told me to go over to see Dad,” says Paula. “I went over there, then Mark called my dad, and Dad was saying, ‘Okay Mark, if that’s what you want to do.’ Mark was telling him he was going to retire. Mark was crying, Dad was crying, and I was crying. Mark said he was tired, there was something wrong with his arm. The team needed someone on the roster who could do the job.”

“I’ve had enough,” Mark said. “I don’t have it anymore. But didn’t we have a great ride, Dad?”

“Yes, son,” Paul replied. “You had a great ride.”