Monday Night Baseball and The Bird
Reflection on Mark Fidrych and his Monday Night beatdown of the Yankees
July, 2023
Monday Night Baseball and The Bird
Night baseball or day? Give me the greatest game under natural light.
Except on Mondays. Baseball on the first night of the work week is the best. For me, it stems from when I was a young Massachusetts lad in the 70s and there were only three ways to watch baseball. Local Red Sox games on WSBK TV-38, Saturday Game of the Week on NBC, or Monday Night Game of the Week on either NBC or ABC.
This is where I pause to offer another dichotomy. If given the choice of television or radio for my baseball fix, I’ll take the audio. When I was seven, I got a transistor radio for Christmas. Maybe the best gift I’ve ever gotten. That summer I discovered that the radio could provide me with more baseball than television. Depending on the weather, I could pull in five or six MLB games on a weeknight. All on the AM dial. Red Sox of course. Baltimore. The New York teams. Philadelphia. Sometimes even Pittsburgh, Cleveland, or even Montreal. As I write this column, the Mets and Howie Rose are emanating from my old iPhone 7, which I’ll keep as long as I can get MLB Audio.
Let’s venture back to Monday Night Baseball. If you grew up in the 80s or earlier, did you used to get the new TV Guide and rush to see what was on the following week? There was no internet that could give you immediate access to a television schedule. You had to have TV Guide. And most families subscribed to it through US Mail. This small magazine of television listings would arrive and I would go to Monday Night and see what game would be selected. You can’t understand how important that was to me. It was critical to know whether it would be “Pittsburgh Pirates vs the Reds, from Cincinnati” or “California Angels vs the Royals, from Kansas City.” The dessert was who would be selected at the “Rain Game.” This was the B game, only shown if the A game was called off because of inclement weather. For the next few days, the Monday Night matchup would be in my head. I’d make sure that when I slowly devoured the Boston Sunday Globe sports section, extra attention would be given to the two teams I’d watch the next night. It was great to be a baseball fan on summer Monday nights.
Monday Night Baseball preceded its more famous little brother, Monday Night Football by a few years, starting in 1967. These games weren’t broadcast every week during the season, usually starting in May after the network sweeps. June, July, and August were typically when the Monday night games were on. Which was helpful to me, as Mom would rarely let me stay up late on a school night. This was the era when a three-hour game was almost unheard of. So even in the summer, when I was allowed to stay up, I could be in bed before 11. (and hope that an East team might be on the West Coast so I could pick up the radio broadcast - a tv/radio doubleheader).
There are two Monday night games that I’ll never forget. The first was when I was nine, April 8, 1974 to be exact. When Henry Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record. An early season game that was broadcast on NBC. Yup. A Monday-night game in April. NBC took a risk and ditched its regular Monday night programming so the world could see the historic event. Obviously, there was no guarantee the home run would be hit. However, Aaron did his part, homering in the fourth inning. My dad was a salesman who regularly traveled during the week so I often watched games alone. It was special that we were together that night to see Hank dodging fans around the bases. Mom really wasn’t a sports fan, but she made sure I stayed up later than usual so Dad and I could share the moment.
The second, and to me, more memorable Monday night game is the “Mark Fidrych game.” I think that is what everyone over the age of 55 calls it now. Yankees at Tigers. Late June 1976. I was 11 years old, so I had a better sense of baseball compared to the Aaron game. Pretty warm day as I recall. We had finished school (fifth grade) the week before, and knowing Mom would allow it, I was primed to stay up late. The 76 Yankees were on their way to the World Series, and by this date, they were already eight games in front of the rest of the AL East, which included the sub-.500 Tigers. The national intrigue was because Mark “The Bird” Fidrych would be on the mound for Detroit.
I could write a lot about The Bird, as he was such a fantastic story. The sports writer Joe Posnansky did a great article in 2020 for The Athletic about Fidrych, centering on that 1976 game. The local connection for me was that Fidrych was also from Central Massachusetts, Northborough, a small town outside Worcester, about 45 minutes from where I was growing up.
By game night, Fidrych had begun to garner notice since his MLB debut in mid-May. If it was 2023, with ESPN and other various outlets, he would have been well-known after a start or two. The nickname stemmed from the fact he resembled Big Bird from Sesame Street. (The pair would share a Sports Illustrated cover the following summer.)
After Fidrych shut down the best team in the American League that Monday night, he became an instant celebrity. Oh, he turned 22 later that summer.
Yes, that’s correct. The pitcher I saw dominate the Yankees on Monday Night Baseball was only 21 years old. The game that evening was fairly forgettable. The Tigers went up 2-1 early, then scored three runs in the 7th and 8th innings to break it open for a 5-1 win. But Fidrych was the story. He did his thing for nine innings, giving up seven hits but providing something that the stodgy MLB needed - excitement. Baseball had a true phenomenon. I was only 11, but it seemed everyone I knew had watched the game.
The best part of that night was the post-game interview, which we can all watch thanks to YouTube. Bob Uecker has Fidrych on the field, and ABC puts the following caption on the screen, Mark Fidrych (as if we didn’t know who was being interviewed), and underneath it reads, “The Bird.” Great stuff. During the interview, we see pure joy. In that beautiful Massachusetts accent, Fidrych came across as if Kevin Costner’s Bull Durham character had coached him. “I’m just happy to be here and want to help the team win.” Except he wasn’t coached. And he wasn’t dumb. A good adjective would be “unadulterated.” This is a perfect example of why we want young people to play sports. We can’t simulate this feeling.
Two weeks later, Fidrych started the All-Star game in Philadelphia. By season’s end, he was Rookie of the Year and Cy Young runner-up. Then it was over. A knee injury during the next spring training, followed by an arm injury. The colorful Bird was grounded and MLB returned to gray. The country had to wait until 1981 and Fernando Mania to regain similar excitement.
Baseball on Monday nights continued to capture my imagination, even through high school and college years. In the late 70s, my cousin introduced me to APBA baseball, a cards and dice game where players perform similarly to their season statistics. The game was my best friend in high school. I got the cards for the 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox season and started replaying so I could experience the excitement of a pennant race that I was too young for but wished I had witnessed. During the replay, I would look at the games scheduled for Monday and decide which one should be selected as Monday Night Baseball. It became a special occasion when I’d roll the dice for one of these “Monday Night” games. Even though Howard Cosell wasn’t announcing 1967 games, I’d do a pre-game show in his cadence that only I could hear.
Too much of a good thing. It’s an idiom, but apt. The advent of ESPN and cable television took away the Monday magic. The Worldwide Leader has attempted to make Sunday Night its focal point. Yet I will always look at the Monday schedule on my MLB app and pick out a game that I think NBC or ABC would choose to televise. On that night, I’ll often put it on my phone, close my eyes, imagining I’m eleven years old again. Pretty good chance I will be up later than that June night in 1976 - Fidrych and the Tigers won that game in one hour and fifty-one minutes.