1977: The Dead Arm
After a very successful debut season in which he was an AL All-Star, won the AL Rookie of the Year Award, finished second in Cy Young voting and 11th in MVP voting, Fidrych’s second year in the big leagues did not go as well. It started with a mishap in spring training. Fidrych was shagging balls in the outfield and doing it in the goofy way that a 22-year-old might. Unfortunately, at one point he took a wrong step and strained his knee.
The injury kept Fidrych out for the first quarter of the season. He made his first start on May 27th and it was a good one. He pitched a complete game against the Seattle Mariners, allowing two runs (one earned) in a 2-1 loss. His next start was not so good (6 IP, 10 H, 5 ER), but then he got right back on track and pitched six straight complete games, winning all of them. In these six starts, he faced an average of nearly 34 batters per start, almost exactly the same grueling workload he’d had the previous season. At this point of the season, he was 6-2 with a 1.83 ERA. It looked like “The Bird” was just as good as ever.
And then he wasn’t. After making seven starts and pitching 60 innings in June, Fidrych had two ugly starts in July. He gave up 12 earned runs in 11 1/3 innings. He faced just three batters in his next start before coming out of the game. He knew something was wrong. His arm was dead. The narrative for the last 40 years has been that the knee injury in Spring Training caused Fidrych to alter his mechanics and ultimately injured his arm. At the time, they didn’t have the technology we have today, so his injury was simply thought to be a case of a pitcher’s arm going dead.
Next: Pitching With a Broken Wing