Fidrych was an overgrown kid living the dream (cont.)

Mark Fidrych appeared on the June 6, 1977 cover of 'Sports Illustrated' with Big Bird. Lane Stewart/SI

My parents had Elvis. I had Mark Fidrych.

Fidrych lost four of five starts in late August and early September, and it seems like maybe the spell was wearing off. But then he threw a shutout at Yankee Stadium, and he won his last three starts (all complete games) and he finished 19-9, and he led the league with a 2.34 ERA, and he threw a league-leading 24-complete games, and he started the All-Star Game, and he was the biggest baseball star in America. And of course, looking back, he was an icon in Detroit when times were tough, when the sports teams were lousy, when unemployment was up, when America was down.

"Go Bird Go!" the fans would shout when he pitched. "Go Bird Go!"

I didn't think about any of that. All I knew was that there was a pitcher who looked like Big Bird and talked to baseballs and got out the best hitters in the world. I taped black and white newspaper photos of Fidrych on my bedroom wall -- the only non-hometown player I would allow on my Wall of Fame. Like I say, I was 9 years old. And, like every other 9 year old I knew, The Bird had set my imagination soaring.

Everyone knows how it ended for Fidrych. He hurt his leg, then his shoulder, and though he did pitch well at times, he never quite felt right again. He only started 27 games in the big leagues after his rookie season. He tried to hang on, and at times toward the end it was sad to watch. I remember the game he started in Cleveland in 1980, when he was 26 years old, going on 40. He pitched to two Indians batters. Miguel Dilone singled and stole second. The Bird hit Dell Alston with a pitch. And The Bird was taken out of the game.

Two weeks later, in front of 12,000 or so in Toronto, The Bird pitched his final game. In the fifth inning he gave up a three-run homer to Ernie Whitt. Then he got Lloyd Moseby to ground back to him. And the career was over.

In many ways, time has reduced Fidrych to one of the 1970s fads -- like Evel Knievel, bell-bottom jeans, disco and the guy who said "You doesn't have to call me Johnson." But Fidrych was more than that. He was what's possible. He was an overgrown kid living his dream. He was magical. Monday was a sad, sad day in baseball. First we heard that Harry Kalas, the Philadelphia Phillies announcer with the voice that sounded like it should crack the clouds, died.

And then we heard that Mark Fidrych was found on his Massachusetts farm, dead at 54. There are a lot of things to remember, but I mostly recall watching him kneel on the pitchers' mound and smooth out the rough Cleveland dirt that day when I was a kid. All these people around us laughed and pointed and yelled insults. The Bird did not seem to mind at all. He just kept on working the dirt. He knew the score. He was exactly where every 9-year-old boy in America wanted to be.