{"id":4574,"date":"2009-04-14T06:51:17","date_gmt":"2009-04-14T11:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4574"},"modified":"2009-05-30T10:03:19","modified_gmt":"2009-05-30T15:03:19","slug":"mark-the-bird-fidrych","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4574","title":{"rendered":"Mark “The Bird” Fidrych"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tigers great Fidrych found dead yesterday:<\/a><\/p>\n

Fidrych, who won 19 games as a rookie in \u201976 but had his pitching career abbreviated by injuries, was found dead by his friend Joseph Amorello beneath his 10-wheel truck at about 2:30 p.m. State police detectives are investigating the circumstances of the accident, said Worcester Country District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr.Fidrych, who worked in trucking and construction since his baseball career ended in 1983, had a job scheduled for this morning, but the site wasn\u2019t ready, so he returned home. Later in the day, Amorello, the owner of the A.F. Amorello & Sons construction company for which Fidrych often worked, stopped by Fidrych\u2019s home to say hello and discuss an upcoming job, only to encounter a gruesome scene.<\/p>\n

Neither the district attorney\u2019s office nor the Northborough Police Department would confirm further details of the accident. Reached via cell phone tonight, Amorello said, \u2018\u2018It was obvious there was nothing I could do at that time.\u2019\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fidrych’s story reads like a B movie.\u00a0 Drafted low in the pecking order, pulled out of the minors more or less as an afterthought, Fidrych got his first start when the scheduled starter was out sick.\u00a0 Fidrych <\/a>got 19 wins in a rookie season where he was paid – this blew my mind – $16,500.<\/p>\n

He became a flash-in-the-pan superstar, got injured, never got near the record of his rookie season, and eventually left the game.<\/p>\n

But it was fun while it lasted.\u00a0 And it may have been among the last times I personally followed the Tigers for more than a game at a time…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tigers great Fidrych found dead yesterday: Fidrych, who won 19 games as a rookie in \u201976 but had his pitching career abbreviated by injuries, was found dead by his friend Joseph Amorello beneath his 10-wheel truck at about 2:30 p.m. State police detectives are investigating the circumstances of the accident, said Worcester Country District Attorney […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoriam","category-the-rare-sports-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}