December 12, 1975: The Staub-Lolich Trade

Staub wore Number 4 in his first tenure with the Mets.

I decided this photo, from his second tenure with them,

was the best picture I had of him.

December 12, 1975: The New York Mets trade right fielder Rusty Staub and pitcher Bill Laxton to the Detroit Tigers for pitcher Mickey Lolich and outfielder Billy Baldwin.

Laxton and Baldwin (no relation to the Long Island acting family that includes a Billy Baldwin) are footnotes in baseball history. The Mets needed pitching, and thought that Lolich, a hero of 2 postseason runs for the Tigers, had something left, so they were willing to give up Le Grand Orange in his prime.

Lolich went 8-13 for a decent (82-80) Mets team in 1976, but feuded with team management, and retired after the season. After sitting out the entire 1977 season, he was granted free agency, and pitched 2 more seasons as a reliever for the San Diego Padres. He finished with a career record of 217-191, and more strikeouts than any lefthanded pitcher in history, 2,832. (A few lefties have since surpassed that total.)

As for Staub, maybe he wouldn't have hit as well in Shea's dimensions and wind as he did toward Tiger Stadium's short right field porch. But the Mets missed his bat: He averaged 19 home runs and 106 RBIs over the next 3 seasons. This was one of the trades that made the Tom Seaver trade of 1977 a confirmation of the already-present collapse, not the start of one.

By the time the Mets got Staub back, he was fat and slow, and little more than an occasionally-good pinch hitter. He finished in 1985 with a .279 lifetime batting average, and 2,716 hits including 292 home runs. He is the only player to collect at least 500 hits with 4 different teams: The Houston Astros, then the Montreal Expos, then the Mets, then the Tigers. Along with Ty Cobb, Gary Sheffield and Alex Rodriguez, he is 1 of 4 players in the major leagues to hit a home run before his 20th birthday and hit one after his 40th birthday.

And yet, both Lolich and Staub fall a little short of consideration for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

*

December 12, 1975 was a Friday. Actress and scientist Mayim Bialik was born on this day.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. There were 6 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks lost to the Buffalo Braves, 123-110 at the Buffalo memorial Auditorium. Bob McAdoo scored 39 points for the Braves, leading all professional scorers on the night.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Washington Bullets, 130-108 at the Boston Garden.

* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 109-91 at the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena.

* The Kansas City Kings beat the Chicago Bulls, 109-99 at the Kemper Arena (now the Hy-Vee Arena) in Kansas City.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 114-102 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had 34 points and 21 rebounds.

* And the Seattle SuperSonics beat the Detroit Pistons, 97-95 at the Seattle Center Coliseum.

There were 3 games in the American Basketball Association:

* The New York Nets beat the Spirits of St. Louis, 106-98 at the Nassau Coliseum.

* The San Antonio Spurs beat the Kentucky Colonels, 107-100 at Freedom Hall in Louisville.

* And the Denver Nuggets beat the Virginia Squires, 110-107 at The Scope in Norfolk.

There were 3 games played in the NHL:

* The New York Islanders and the Atlanta Flames played to a tie, 3-3 at The Omni in Atlanta.

* The Detroit Red Wings beat the Washington Capitals, 5-3 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* And the California Golden Seals beat the St. Louis Blues, 5-2 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

And there were 5 games in the World Hockey Association:

* The Toronto Toros beat the Quebec Nordiques, 6-4 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The Cleveland Crusaders beat the Minnesota Fighting Saints, 1-0 at The Coliseum in the Cleveland suburb of Richfield, Ohio.

* The Houston Aeros beat the Indianapolis Racers, 4-2 at The Summit in Houston. (The arena has since been converted into the Central Campus of the Lakewood Church, Dr. Joel Osteen's "megachurch.")

* The Winnipeg Jets beat the Calgary Cowboys, 4-2 at the Winnipeg Arena.

* And the Cincinnati Stingers beat the Phoenix Roadrunners, 4-2 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.

October 17, 1973: The OPEC Oil Shock

October 17, 1973: The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) proclaims an oil embargo at its meeting in Vienna, Austria. It is targeted at nations perceived as supporting Israel during the Yom Kippur War, which was ongoing at this point. (OPEC's headquarters has been in Vienna since 1965, even though Austria is not a member.)

The OPEC member nations are the Middle East nations of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and Libya; the East Asian nation of Indonesia; and the South American nation of Venezuela. For those of you old enough to remember the 1990s, it may seem shocking to see Iraq and Kuwait working together. For those of you, like me, old enough to remember the 1980s (if not quite 1973), it may seem shocking to see Iraq and Iran working together. But it would take until 1979 for the Islamic Revolution to take over in Iran, and the same year for Saddam Hussein to do so in Iraq.

The targeted nations are America, Britain, Canada, Japan and the Netherlands. It is later extended to Portugal, and the apartheid nations of South Africa and Rhodesia.

In America, this drives the price of gasoline way up, and they had already gone up a lot this year, as a general inflation jacked up the prices of everything. It didn't help that President Richard Nixon was paying more attention to defending himself in the Watergate scandal than to the economy. Three days later came his firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, and of 2 aides who refused to help him do it, an event known as "the Saturday Night Massacre."

The embargo ended in March 1974, with the price of oil per barrel having gone up from $3 to almost $12. This had such an effect on the American economy that, when Time magazine named its Man of the Year for 1974, 9 months after the end of the embargo and 4 months after Nixon was forced to resign the Presidency, it didn't name Nixon; or his replacement, Gerald Ford; or any of Nixon's opponents, such as the new Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski, or House Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino, or, collectively, the U.S. Supreme Court. It named King Faisal of Saudi Arabia.

One of the ways America dealt with the gas shortage was to institute the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit. Another was to ration gas: If your license plate ended with an odd number, you could buy gas on an odd-numbered day; if it ended with an even number, you could buy it on an even-numbered day. This policy would be adopted again in 1979, the next time an oil embargo was launched.

But there was another way America dealt with the oil embargo, which had nothing to do with cars: An additional reliance on nuclear energy. In 1979, a near-disaster at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania showed why that idea was so dumb.

UPDATE: It took me until 2024 to think of this, but the 1970s were Schrödinger's Decade. There was too much oil, and, at the same time, not enough of it.

*

October 17, 1973 was a Wednesday. On the same day, Motorola engineer Marty Cooper was granted the patent for the handheld mobile telephone.

It was midweek for the NFL and college football. But Game 4 of the World Series was played at Shea Stadium. The New York Mets evened the Series at 2 games apiece with a 6-1 win over the Oakland Athletics at Shea Stadium. In support of Met starting pitcher Jon Matlack, Rusty Staub went 4-for-4 with a homer and 5 RBI. The New Orleans chef was really cooking that night.

A's manager Dick Williams was tired of team owner Charlie Finley's meddling, and told his players that, win or lose, he would resign when the Series was over. In the 8th inning, as a pinch-hitter, he sent Mike Andrews, the 2nd baseman whose 2 errors in the 12th inning of Game 2 at the Oakland Coliseum gave the Mets a win, and whom Finley had unsuccessfully tried to have removed from the World Series roster. The Met fans, showing an intelligence for which I tend credit them, gave him a standing ovation. He grounded out. It turned out to be his last major league at-bat.

There were 2 NBA games played that day:

* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Golden State Warriors, 109-95 at the Milwaukee Arena. In 1974, it was renamed the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena.

* And the Kansas City-Omaha Kings beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 108-106 at the Seattle Center Coliseum.

There were 3 ABA games played:

* The Kentucky Colonels beat the Virginia Squires, 116-106 at Freedom Hall in Louisville.

* The Carolina Cougars beat the Memphis Tams, 108-95 at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis.

* And the Denver Rockets beat the Utah Stars, 112-97 at the Auditorium Arena in Denver. The Rockets would become the Denver Nuggets at the start of the 1974-75 season.

There were 6 NHL games played:

* The New York Rangers beat the St. Louis Blues, 4-0 at Madison Square Garden. Eddie Giacomin had the shutout, and was backed by goals from Bruce MacGregor, Steve Vickers, Rod Gilbert and Jim Neilson.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Montreal Canadiens, 5-3 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The Atlanta Flames beat the Boston Bruins, 4-3 at The Omni in Atlanta.

* The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Vancouver Canucks, 5-0 at the Chicago Stadium. The team's name was always written as 2 words, "Black Hawks," until 1986, when their original NHL charter document was found, and it was seen that the name had been written as 1 word, "Blackhawks," and that's how they've officially written it since.

* The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Minnesota North Stars, 4-2 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* And the Philadelphia Flyers beat the California Golden Seals, 5-1 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena. Finley owned them, too, and they went out of business, but not before playing the 1976-77 and 1977-78 seasons as the Cleveland Barons.

There were 2 games in the World Hockey Association:

* The Winnipeg Jets beat the New England Whalers, 3-1 at the Boston Garden.

* And the Houston Aeros, with 44-year-old Gordie Howe leading a line with his sons Mark and Marty, beat the Vancouver Blazers, 7-2 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver.

There was one more sporting event on this day that I should mention: The England national soccer team can only manage a 1-1 draw against Poland in a European qualifying match for the 1974 World Cup at the old Wembley Stadium in London. It means that England won't even qualify for the World Cup, and manager Sir Alf Ramsey, who guided them to the 1966 World Cup, is soon fired. Poland will go on to reach the Semifinals, their best performance ever. (They would match that in 1982, but have yet to surpass it.)

I have a separate entry for that event.

October 8, 1973: Pete Rose vs. Bud Harrelson

October 8, 1973: A year to the day after the Lerrin LaGrow-Bert Campaneris incident, there's another Playoff brawl, this time in the National League Championship Series.

The New York Mets beat the Cincinnati Reds, 9-2 in Game 3 at Shea Stadium, in a game that should have been remembered for Rusty Staub hitting home runs in the 1st and 2nd innings.

Instead, it is remembered for 5-foot-11, 200-pound Pete Rose breaking up a double play by crashing into 5-foot-11, 140-pound Bud Harrelson, and then starting a fight with the much thinner man.

With the fight broken up, Rose returns to his position in left field, where Met fans (understandably angry, but they were hardly justified in their actions) start throwing things at him. Reds manager Sparky Anderson takes his team off the field, fearing for their safety.

The umpires get a message to Loren Matthews, the Shea public address announcer, who announces that if the throwing doesn't stop, the game will be forfeited. Remember, the series is tied 1-1 and the Mets, barring a total (or even, dare I say it, Metlike) collapse, have this game won, and need only 1 more win for the Pennant. Lose it, even by forfeit, and it will be the Reds who are just 1 game from the Pennant.

Desperate, Met manager Yogi Berra takes Tom Seaver and Willie Mays out there, and the 3 of them plead for peace. Listening to the 3 New York baseball legends, the fans stop, and the Mets finish off the win.

The next day, with a banner hanging from Shea's upper deck reading, "A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME STILL STINKS" -- I guess they weren't willing to say "Sucks" in public in 1973 -- Rose will make his point by winning the game and tying up the series with an extra-inning home run. But the Mets will win Game 5 and the Pennant.

*

October 8, 1973 was a Monday. The American League Championship Series was on a travel day, with the Oakland Athletics and the Baltimore Orioles tied at 1 game apiece. The A's would beat the O's in 5 games, and then beat the Mets in the World Series.

The NBA season started the next day; the NHL and American Basketball Association seasons, the day after that. The World Hockey Association season had already begun, but it scheduled no games for this date.

And on ABC Monday Night Football, the Washington Redskins beat the Dallas Cowboys, 14-7 at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium.

If you've watched the superhero film X-Men: Days of Future Passed, you saw the villain Magneto (played as a younger man by Michael Fassbinder) rip RFK Stadium off its foundation in 1973, and move its circular form around the White House to block it off. As he begins this, the field is being lined for a baseball game. This means that, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Washington Senators did not move to become the Texas Rangers after the 1971 season; or D.C. got yet another new team to replace the "New Senators" after the "Old Senators" became the Minnesota Twins after the 1960 season.

September 27, 1963: Houston's Baby Colts

September 27, 1963: The Houston Colt .45s, an expansion team at the end of their 2nd season, 35 games out of 1st place, try something. After all, what have they got to lose? Three more games, at most.

In their 3rd-from-last game of the season, against their fellow 1962 expansion team, the New York Mets, at Colt Stadium -- a 32,000-seat, single-decked, mosquito-infested temporary stadium with no protection from the brutal Texas Sun, used as a stopgap facility until the Astrodome can be built next-door -- manager Harry Craft tries what becomes known as the "Baby Colts" experiment. For the 1st time in major league history, and it remains the only time, Craft started a lineup made up entirely of players who had made their major league debuts that season.

Here's his starting lineup:

Shortstop, Number 29, Roland "Sonny" Jackson, 19 years, 80 days.

2nd Base, 12, Joe Morgan, 19 years, 8 days.

Center Field, 18, Jimmy Wynn, 21 years, 200 days.

1st Base, 10, Daniel "Rusty" Staub, 19 years, 179 days.

Right Field, 17, Aaron Pointer, 19 years, 160 days.

Left Field, 29, Brock Davis, 19 years, 344 days.

3rd Base, 4, Glenn Vaughan, 19 years, 223 days.

Catcher, 8, Jerry Grote, 20 years, 356 days.

Pitcher, 42, Jay Dahl, 17 years, 295 days.

So, 7 out of the 9 starters were still teenagers, and the starting pitcher wasn't even 18 years old.

In the 3rd inning, Craft relieved Dahl with Danny Coombs (Number 41; 21 years, 188 days). The next inning, he sent John Weekly (26; 26, 105) to pinch-hit for Coombs. In the 4th, he sent Joe Hoerner (44; 26, 319) out to pitch.

For the 6th, he moved Vaughan to shortstop, and sent Ernie Fazio (11; 21, 245) to 3rd base, replacing Jackson in the leadoff spot in the batting order. Later that inning, he sent Mike White (16; 24, 283) to pinch-hit for Hoerner.

In the 7th, his new pitcher was Jim Dickson (34; 25, 160), and he sent Dave Adlesh (24; 20, 74) to replace Grote as catcher. In the 8th, he sent Carl Warwick (20; 26, 212) to pinch-hit for Dickson. In the 9th, he sent Dick Drott (36) in to pitch. 

Jackson, Dahl, Coombs and Hoerner were making their major league debuts. Pointer's debut had come 5 days earlier; Morgan, Grote and White, 6 days; Vaughan, 7 days; Wynn had debuted on July 10; Dickson on July 2; Adlesh on May 12; and Staub and Davis had both debuted on April 9. Fazio and Weekly had debuted in 1962; Warwick, in 1961. Drott debuted back in 1957, and, at 27 years and 188 days, was the oldest Houston player in the game. It wasn't his 1st major league game, but it turned out to be his last.

Did it work? No: The Mets scored 3 runs in the 2nd inning, and 5 in the 3rd, on their way to a 10-3 win. The Mets even sent their own teenager into the game: Ed Kranepool, 18 years and 322 days old, was a defensive replacement for Tim Harkness at 1st base.

The next day, of the previous day's players, the only ones the Astros sent out were Vaughan, Morgan, Staub, Wynn and Fazio. And they won, 6-1. The season ended the next day, with a 13-4 Colt victory. In this one, they used Vaughan, Morgan, Wynn, Staub, Dickson, Adlesh, and another debutant, John Paciorek, who went 3-for-3, and never appeared in another game.

This game would turn out to be Dahl's only major league appearance. The native of Colton, California, outside San Bernardino, developed a back injury that made pitching impossible for the entire 1964 season. He only appeared in 11 games, all as an outfielder, for the Statesville Colts in the Western Carolinas League. In 1965, he started 7 games for the Durham Bulls of the Carolina League, then went 5-0 for the Salisbury Astros of the Western Carolina League. He seemed to be on the way back up.

On June 20, 1965, with the Colt .45s having moved into the Astrodome, next-door to Colt Stadium, and changed their name to the Houston Astros, Dahl was the winning pitcher as Salisbury beat Gastonia, 7-3. That night, the players were invited to a steak dinner at the home of the team's owner, G.M. Hamilton. Dahl and a teammate, Gary Marshall, left the dinner in Marshall's Pontiac GTO. They picked up Marshall's girlfriend, Patricia Ann Troutman, and went to see a movie.

As Marshall drove Troutman home, at 11:24 PM, he hit a patch of sand on Lincolnton Road in Salisbury, skidded for 185 feet, and crashed into a tree. Troutman died instantly. Dahl died about 3 hours later, on June 21. Marshall was blinded. He went home to Kansas, later moved to Dallas, became a minister, tending to the newly blinded, and lived until 2008.

As of September 27, 2022, Jay Dahl remains the last player under age 18 to appear in a major league game; and, at 19 years and 197 days, the youngest former major league player to die.

Some of the Baby Colts fared better. Morgan would make the Baseball Hall of Fame, winning 3 Pennants, 2 World Series and 2 National League Most Valuable Player awards with the Cincinnati Reds; come back to the Astros, and help them to 2 Playoff berths; and win another Pennant with the Philadelphia Phillies. Staub would become a star with the Astros, the Montreal Expos, the Mets, and the Detroit Tigers, collecting 2,716 hits, and become a beloved broadcaster with the Mets.

Warwick would win a World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1964, and Hoerner would do so in 1967. There is some appropriateness to this, as, before the Colts, the Cardinals had a farm team there, the Houston Buffaloes. Grote would be the starting catcher on the Met teams that won the 1969 World Series and, with Staub as a teammate, the 1973 Pennant. Wynn, "the Toy Cannon," would hit 291 home runs, 228 of them as an Astro, making him the franchise's all-time leader until Jeff Bagwell came along.

There was one more rookie of note for the '63 Astros: One of their broadcasters was in his 1st season in the major leagues, after 2 seasons with the Pacific Coast League's Hawaii Islanders. He would remain with the Astros through 1970, moving to the Philadelphia Phillies, and building a Hall of Fame career with them that would last for the rest of his life. His name was Harry Kalas.

*

September 27, 1963 was a Friday. These other baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Minnesota Twins, 4-3 at Yankee Stadium. Camilo Pascual used his nasty Cuban curveball to win his 21st game of the season, while Stan Williams had to leave the game due to injury after 3 innings. Harmon Killebrew went 2-for-4. Mickey Mantle went 1-for-3 with a walk, while Roger Maris went 2-for-4 with a solo home run.

Yogi Berra went 0-for-2 with a walk. The next day, the Yankees lost to the Twins again, 6-3. Yogi pinch-hit for pitcher Al Downing in the 9th, and lined out to 3rd base. That was his last regular-season at-bat as a Yankee, although he did have 1 more at-bat, a pinch-hit lineout in Game 3 of the World Series against the Dodgers.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Detroit Tigers, 5-2 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Brooks Robinson went 0-for-2 with a walk. Al Kaline, playing in his home town, got a hit as a pinch-hitter.

* The Chicago White Sox swept a doubleheader from the Washington Senators, 11-2 and 7-1 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Milwaukee Braves, 3-2 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Ernie Banks did not play the Cubs in this game. Lou Brock did, going 2-for-5 with a stolen base, but nobody had any idea of what was ahead for him, and it wouldn't be with the Cubs. Hank Aaron went 1-for-4, but did not hit a home run. Eddie Mathews did.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-0 at Busch Stadium (formerly Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. John Tsitouris pitched a 2-hit shutout, allowing only a triple to Gary Kolb and a single to Dick Groat. Stan Musial, retiring, did not play in this game. Tommy Harper hit a home run for the Reds, Frank Robinson went 0-for-4, and NL Rookie of the Year Pete Rose went 2-for-5 with an RBI.

* The Kansas City Athletics beat the Cleveland Indians, 3-1 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 5-3 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* And the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the San Francisco Giants, 8-3 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Roberto Clemente went 4-for-5, and Willie Stargell went 2-for-3 with a home run and 3 RBIs. Willie Mays went 1-for-3 with a walk.

* And the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Angels did not play. They did play the next day, with the Red Sox winning, 4-3 at Fenway Park. But they did not play the next day, the regular-season finale. Both teams played 161 games instead of 162, so it's possible that either the Friday or the Sunday game got rained out.

June 28, 1976: The Mark Fidrych Game

Fidrych at Tiger Stadium, 1976.

The famous blue and orange seats

were installed the next season.

June 28, 1976: America -- at least, that part of it outside the Detroit area -- gets its first good look at Mark Fidrych, on ABC Monday Night Baseball.

He took the American League by storm in 1976, and when he pitched, the Detroit Tigers, then an awful team in a suffering city, went from an average attendance of 14,000 at already-creaky Tiger Stadium to 40,000. His start on on June 28, in front of 47,855 paying customers, was a national phenomenon, and he beat the soon-to-be-Pennant-winning New York Yankees, 5-1.

He went the distance, advancing to 8-1 on the season, allowing 1 run on 7 hits. He only struck out 2 batters, but he didn't walk any. The only Yankee run came in the top of the 2nd inning, a home run by Elrod Hendricks, who was catching that day due to an injury to Thurman Munson.

The Tigers scored 2 in the 1st. Their other storybook player, the speedy ex-con Ron LeFlore, led off with a walk, and Rusty Staub hit a home run off Ken Holtzman. It was still only 2-1 Detroit into the 7th, when Aurelio Rodríguez homered. The Tigers iced the game with 2 runs in the 8th.

It wasn't just that he was talented. He was also a big character. He tried to explain that he would talk to himself on the mound, saying things like, "Settle down, you're getting too nervous." But somehow, it incorrectly got around that he was "talking to the ball," telling it where he wanted it to go, where in and around the strike zone, or, after being hit, to which fielder. He would smooth out the mound. He would walk over to an infielder who'd made a great play and shake his hand.

You see, in baseball, which has so often been culturally behind the times -- the world's 1970s were baseball's "Sixties" -- this was considered weird. What's wrong with thanking your fielder for making a great play, or fixing the mound the way you want it?

Fidrych finished the season 19-9. In all other games, the Tigers were 53-78. He led the AL with a 2.34 earned run average (ERA), and started for it in the All-Star Game at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, although he ended up as the losing pitcher. He was named the AL's Rookie of the Year, but finished 2nd in the Cy Young Award voting, to Jim Palmer of the Baltimore Orioles, who went 22-13 with a 2.51 ERA.

Fidrych was just 21 years old, from Northborough, Massachusetts, a town of 14,000 people, an hour's drive west of Boston, and he was as amazed by his sudden fame as anyone else. He seemed both goofy and cool at the same time. A Massachusetts "Park ya cah" accent, so often sounding obnoxious from some guys, sounded charming (or "chahming") coming from him. After the season, he dictated a quickie autobiography to sportswriter Tom Clark, choosing the title No Big Deal.

For all of this, he was making what was then the major league minimum salary of $19,000, although, through bonuses, the Tigers bumped it to $60,000.

In Spring Training the next season, Fidrych, known as "the Bird" because his curly blond hair reminded someone of the Sesame Street character Big Bird -- hurt his knee. Trying to favor it, he hurt his shoulder, tearing his rotator cuff. He wasn't the first pitcher to cause a new injury by favoring an old one, but he may have been the most costly. At least when Dizzy Dean, a great character from an earlier era of baseball, hurt his arm by changing his motion to favor a bad toe, he was at his peak, and had already (if just barely) won enough games to make the Hall of Fame. Fidrych was still near the beginning of his career.

The amazing thing is -- forgive me if this sounds like a Yogi Berra line -- when he could pitch, he could still pitch. He had a nine-strikeout, no-walk 2-1 win over the Yankees in that 1977 season. But he couldn't pitch without pain often enough, and that was his last season of any productiveness. After 1980, he was done, a nobody at 21, a superstar at 22, a has-been at 24.

The amazing thing about Fidrych is that he didn't look at his career as tragic. Even though he got hurt and left baseball before salaries really took off, he had the attitude of, "So what? It's not the end of the world. I've got another life." And for about 30 years, he did have another life, running a farm and a gas station in Northborough. He married in 1986, and had a daughter. He thought it was a good life, and who are we to doubt him?

Still, he accepted that baseball fans liked him, and participated in memorabilia shows, old-timers' games, the Tiger Stadium finale in 1999, things like that. I know this is going to sound like another Yogi-ism -- so what, Yogi was a character, too -- but it was good that the good things that happened to him happened to him.

Fidrych at the Tiger Stadium finale in 1999

On the morning of April 13, 2009, he was working on his farm, trying to fix his truck, and an accident with it brought his strange and amazing life to a painful close. He was 54 years old. He remains a cult figure in baseball, a symbol of an age of weirdness and wonder.

*

June 28, 1976 was a Monday. These other games were played in Major League Baseball that day:

* The New York Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 5-4 at Shea Stadium. Tom Seaver started for the Mets, but Skip Lockwood blew the lead. He ended up as the winning pitcher, anyway, on an 8th-inning wild pitch by Al Hrabosky, "the Mad Hungarian," another pitcher of the era who developed a "character" that became exaggerated. Part of that rally was a pinch-hit single by former Cardinal Joe Torre, and a single by Dave Kingman, who earlier hit a home run. Lou Brock went 1-for-4 with a stolen base.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Montreal Expos, 6-2 at Jarry Park in Montreal. Mike Schmidt hit a home run.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles, 12-8 at Fenway Park in Boston. Jim Palmer, a Hall-of-Famer, started for the O's, but did not figure in the decision. Fergie Jenkins, another Hall-of-Famer, didn't start for the Sox, but was the winning pitcher. For the Sox, Butch Hobson hit a home run, and Carl Yastrzemski went 2-for-4 with an RBI. For the O's, Bobby Grich and Dave Duncan homered, Brooks Robinson went 2-for-4, and Reggie Jackson, in his only season in Baltimore, went 2-for-5 with 2 RBIs.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Chicago Cubs, 9-2 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Al Oliver hit a home run. Willie Stargell went 1-for-5 with 2 RBIs. Bill Madlock hit a home run for the Cubs, and would be a part of the Pirates' 1979 World Series winners.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 5-3 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Indians manager Frank Robinson, in his last season as a player, did not put himself into the game. Hank Aaron, in his last season, went 2-for-4, but did not hit a home run.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Kansas City Royals, 4-3 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Rod Carew went 0-for-3 with a walk. George Brett also went 0-for-3, but had an RBI on a sacrifice fly.

* The Texas Rangers beat the Oakland Athletics, 3-2 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas. Jeff Burroughs singled home the winning run in the bottom of the 11th inning.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the San Diego Padres, 7-3 at San Diego Stadium. (It was later renamed Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium.) Pete Rose went 2-for-5 with an RBI. Johnny Bench went 0-for-3, but did draw 2 walks. Joe Morgan hit a home run.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Atlanta Braves, 5-2 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* The Houston Astros beat the San Francisco Giants, 8-2 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

* And the California Angels and the Chicago White Sox were not scheduled to play.