RobKirkpatrick.com

While grateful for all the attention I’ve gotten for my “other” two books from last year, I think my Cecil Travis book (published in a new Bison Books edition in ‘09 by the University of Nebraska Press) has somewhat gotten lost in the shuffle.  So check out the mini bio for this Washington Senators All-Star from the 1930s and ’40s that I contributed to the SABR Baseball Biography Project:  

http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=597&pid=14327

…Then, if you’d like to know more, click on the BOOKS link at the top of my site and pick your online vendor of choice.

- Rob

I was saddened to hear of the death of Mark “The Bird” Fidrych, the former Detroit Tigers pitcher who took baseball by storm for one shining season back in 1976.

While the nation at large celebrated its bicentennial, Detroit celebrated a 22-year-old rookie who become the most entertaining player in the game. The gangly, curly-haired pitcher from Worcester, Massachusetts, delighted fans with his antic demeanor.  He got down on his hands and knees to smooth out the mound with his hands.  He talked to the baseball, telling it where he wanted it to go, and he extended his arm toward home plate to show it where he wanted it to go.   He got rid of baseballs that seemed to have too many hits in them.   He jumped around boyishly and slapped five with teammates on the field.  In short, he was the biggest, most enjoyable flake in the majors. 

The game has seen more than its share of offbeat characters, but what made Fidrych different was he backed up his act with his performance. In his rookie season, he went a remarkable 19-9 while giving up a league-low 2.34 earned runs per nine innings. Boston Red Sox manager Darrell Johnson named Fidrych the starting pitcher for the American League in that summer’s All-Star Game, in which he was joined in the starting lineup by Tigers teammates Ron LeFlore and Rusty Staub.  Despite their three All-Stars, Detroit won just 74 games in 1976, which means Fidrych was credited with just over 25% of his team’s victories – an amazing load for a rookie to carry.

“The Bird” was the word in ‘76. Most of America was introduced to Fidrych (who got his nickname from his resemblance to Big Bird on Sesame Street) on the night of June 28 during a national broadcast of ABC’s Monday Night Baseball.  He pitched a complete game in a 5-1 win over the eventual American League champion New York Yankees.  Back then, MNB offered the only nationally televised regular-season games.  Baseball fans watched it every week, and I remember watching this particular game and witnessing the rise of the next great young player. In games that I would act out between imaginary players from the majors, I began to smooth out the pitching mound and talking to the whiffle ball before throwing it plateward.

After he’d beaten the Yankees on national TV, the standing ovation in Tiger Stadium urged Fidrych to come back onto the field. As he did so, he seemed overcome, almost embarrassed, at the love being showered upon him.  This, too, was what made him special.  Those around him reported that there was nothing contrived about it.  His flakiness appeared to come from his sheer enthusiasm for playing a game he loved.

How big was The Bird?  In May 1977, the wacky wunderkind became the first athlete to appear on the cover of Rolling Stonemagazine (see below). Like the 1969 Miracle Mets, Fidrych’s baseball stardom captured the imagination of people throughout America, fans and non-fans alike.

Unfortunately, the Tigers phenom would not have a long career. While horsing around on the field during spring training in 1977, he tore the cartilage in his knee.  (Staub would later remember warning Fidrych to settle down, to no avail, and then reacting with dismay when he realized his young teammate had indeed hurt himself.)  He returned for part of the season, compiling a record of 6-4 with a 2.89 ERA, but then he developed arm troubles. Only years later would he discover that he’d torn his rotator cuff.

Much like Washington Senators shortstop Cecil Travis, whose all-star career was sidetracked by World War II, Fidrych was never the same again.  He made a series of comeback attempts with the Tigers, and then in the minor-league system for his hometown favorite Boston Red Sox, but he would never pitch in the majors past 1980 and retired at the age of 29. His career record stands at 29-19 with an ERA of 3.10.

Yet his record does not sufficiently tell the story of Fidrych and what he brought to the game during its revitalization in the 1970s. He recently made an appearance on the MLB Network, relating the fond memories of his career.  I was glad that people still remembered him.  With recent advances in sports medicine, if Fidrych were pitching today, surgery might have repaired his damaged rotator cuff and allowed him to pitch effectively for many years. Instead, the times he lived in would allow him just one-and-a-half years of stardom.  

When I heard of his death yesterday, the result of an apparent accident involving the ten-wheel pickup truck he was working on at his home in Northborough, Massachusetts, I felt sad for two reasons: one, for a player whose candle burned all too briefly; and two, for myself, as a piece of my childhood had died with him.

Rest in peace, Bird.

-Rob

For more on Mark Fidrych, click on:

http://mlb.mlb.com/stats/historical/mlb_player_locator_results.jsp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fidrych

1969: The Year Everything Changed (Skyhorse, 2009) 

“The subtitle of his new book, 1969: The Year Everything Changed, may sound hyperbolic, but Kirkpatrick makes a good case that it was a year of ‘landmark achievements, cataclysmic episodes and generation-defining events.’”–USA Today

“A riveting look at a pivotal year.”–Booklist

“In this compelling account, Kirkpatrick treats the tumultuous events of 1969 with the skills of a journalist, a historian, a sociologist, and a sportswriter and manages to insert moments of lightness and triviality into his grand tour. He writes as easily about jazz-pop as about the rise of the American Indian Movement. He follows a harrowing chapter about the Manson family and the Zodiac Killer with a breathless report on the Amazin’ Mets.…Nostalgic for some, revelatory for others, this is a worthy addition to the literature of the 1960s.”–Library Journal

“A compelling account of the historic year.” – History Channel Magazine Club

“Kirkpatrick is a gifted writer who takes all of the events of this remarkable year and shapes them into a single, cohesive story….Each of these moments is fascinating, but taken together, Kirkpatrick weaves an astonishing tale. Whether you lived through that tumultuous time or not, you’ll love immersing yourself into this book.” – Sean Lahman,  author of The Pro Football Historical Abstract

Magic in the Night: The Words and Music of Bruce Springsteen (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2009)

“Offers a fresh, compelling look at the Boss’s art, his life, even his country.” – Library Media Connection

“Other books have covered the life and works of popular musician Bruce Springsteen, but few offer [this] depth of analysis and critical assessment.” – Midwest Book Review

“Beautifully written.” – David Barker, editor, Continuum’s “33 1/3″ series

“Rob Kirkpatrick’s rich narrative sheds news light on the songs that have become a soundtrack for the American experience.” – Mark K. Updegrove, former publisher of Newsweek and MTV Magazine and author of Baptism by Fire: Eight Presidents Inaugurated During Times of Crisis

Cecil Travis of the Washington Senators: The War-Torn Career of an All-Star Shortstop (Bison, 2009)

“Rob Kirkpatrick has written a warm and compelling biography of one of the best but least appreciated ballplayers in the history of our national pastime. Rob’s book is a beautiful celebration of a beautiful life.” – Timothy M. Gay, author of Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend

“Cecil Travis is one of the best hitters I ever faced. Rob Kirkpatrick’s well-researched biography pays tribute to a player who belongs in the Hall of Fame.” – Bob Feller

This weekend’s famously leaked revelation that Alex Rodriguez had tested positive for steroid use in 2003, confirmed by A-Rod/A-Fraud/A-Roid himself, has brought the juicing controversy to new heights, or depths.  I’ve always felt that Rodriguez has, by and large, gotten a raw deal from Yankee fans.  When he was in compiling those amazing (and, we know now, enhanced) seasons playing shortstop for the Texas Rangers from 2001-2003, Yankee fans insisted, “A-Rod has better stats, but Jeter is the better player.”  But when the Yankees acquired Rodriguez in 2004, those same fans suddenly changed their tune, touting him as the best player in baseball and saying he’d assured a return to World Series glory.  To date, that hasn’t worked out, and even though A-Rod has won two MVPs in the Bronx and generally outplayed Jeter, Bronx fans hold Jeter close to their hearts while blaming A-Rod for the team’s lack of rings. Fans cheer A-Rod’s home runs, but deep down, they just aren’t that into him.

Rodriguez has admitted to taking PEDs for three seasons and three seasons only–conveniently, the three seasons before he came to New York.  His justification?  He was young, stupid, naive.  He felt a lot of pressure. Somehow, when he came to the Big Apple, he suddenly grew up, grew smarter, became a man of the world, and no longer felt that same pressure. He was suddenly clean again. Right.

Rodriguez now joins Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Jason Giambi, and Gary Sheffield, all high-profile Yankee players who’ve been implicated in the continuing steroid investigations. Maybe Balco should be awarded naming rights to the new ballpark in the Bronx.

The steroid scandal is no laughing matter, of course. Nor is it a black-and-white one. Fans and media cry “Cheat!” when a player like Rodriguez is fingered for juicing up.  Okay.  He was.  So, too, were some of the pitchers he faced.  What about the players in the ’80s who popped speed on a regular basis?  Were they cheating, too?  Who were the “pure” players?  People point to Babe Ruth and say he set the home run record aided only by beer – one of the few instances in which the hard-livin’ Sultan of Swat has been held up as a paragon of purity and virtue.  But he also did it without having to face the most talented African-American and dark-skinned Latino pitchers.  Couldn’t one say that baseball as a whole was, in a sense, ”cheating” the fans of the highest possible level of competition?  When fans start talking about asterisks being applied to record books for certain eras, I have to wonder – where would the asterisks start and stop?

In the end, the most regrettable result of the scandal is the message it sends to younger athletes. I don’t mean the abstract message that cheating is rewarded–they already get that message from the financial headlines, with corporate execs rewarded with golden parachutes after running their companies into the ground and banks with “questionable” practices receiving near-trillion-dollar bailouts. I’m talking more practically about the current generation of young players who now grow up thinking they can only make it in their chosen sport by taking steroids that may yield short-term benefits but have serious, detrimental effects on their health in the long run.  Even at the highest levels, athletics should still be a game – not a gladiator match with contestants sent into the arena to risk their lives for the delight of spectators.

***

For a look at baseball before steroids, speed, free agency, Astroturf, and West Coast road trips, you can check out Cecil Travis of the Washington Senators: The War-Torn Career of an All-Star Shortstop, now available from Bison Books on both Amazon and BN.com!

Taking a break from all my postings on 1969…I wanted to step back for a moment to 1941 – specifically, the landmark  ’41 baseball season, when Ted Williams hit .406 and Joe DiMaggio had his record 56-game hitting streak. Since then, no player has finished a Major League season with a .400 average, and DiMaggio’s mark has never been seriously challenged.

Yet a little-known fact, one of my favorite pieces of baseball trivia, is that Cecil Travis led all of baseball in hits that year. A three-time All-Star for the Washington Senators, Travis tallied 218 hits (the only player in baseball to reach the 200-hit mark that season) while hitting .359 and knocking in 101 runs in 1941, when he emerged as the top shortstop in the game.

Travis seemed destined for Cooperstown at the time, having compiled seven .300 seasons. But the soft-spoken Georgia native with the sweet, left-handed batting stroke was drafted into military service following the ‘41 season and spent the next 3 1/2 seasons away from the game due to World War II. He returned to the Senators late in the ‘45 season but was never the same player again – he’d suffered frostbite during the war, though Travis said he simply was unable to regain the timing in his swing – and retired at the end of 1947.

When Travis passed away in December 2006, he had been largely forgotten by all but the most esoteric baseball fans, but such dignitaries as Bob Feller and the late Bowie Kuhn have said that Travis merits induction in the Hall of Fame.

When I spoke to Mr. Travis several years ago, he seemed entirely uninterested in the fact that someone was writing a book about him.  He was known as a modest man, once voted the favorite player of American League umpires, and the complete antithesis of many modern athletes.  No one had written a book about Travis, which was just one reason why I chose to do so. Cecil Travis of the Washington Senators, my first full-length book, was published originally in 2006, and I’m delighted that Bison Books (of the University of Nebraska Press) has come out with a new edition. The Bison Books edition comes with a much nicer cover, proofing errors corrected, and a more trade-friendly list price!

If you’re a fan of old-time baseball – of an era when teams traveled by train and St. Louis was the western-most club in the ”bigs” – I think you’ll enjoy this book. 

-Rob

Foreword by Dave Kindred
(Bison Books/University of Nebraska Press, March 2009)

A three-time All-Star, Cecil Travis (1913–2006) was well on his way to a Hall of Fame career when he was drafted for World War II in 1941. When he returned to the game in 1945 after three and a half years in the Army, Travis was no longer the dominant player he had been. In the three seasons that followed—the last of his career—only once did Travis play in more than seventy-five games, and his offensive numbers plummeted. Yet his prewar accomplishments were such that he finished his twelve-year career with a .314 batting average, and baseball maven Bill James put Travis atop his list of players most likely to have lost a Hall of Fame career to the war.

This biography documents Travis’s life and dynamic career. It recounts his childhood years on his family’s Riverdale farm in rural Georgia, his demonstration of talent during high school, the beginning of his professional career with the Minor League Chattanooga Lookouts in 1931, his rise with the Washington Senators, the historic 1941 season in which Travis led all of baseball in hits, his time as a soldier, his playing decline from 1945 to 1947, and his retirement. In an epilogue Cecil Travis comments on his baseball career, the effects of the war, and his life in Riverdale, where he raised livestock on the farm that was his childhood home.

“Cecil Travis was one of the best hitters I ever faced. Rob Kirkpatrick’s well-researched biography pays tribute to a player who belongs in the Hall of Fame.”—Bob Feller, Hall of Fame pitcher

“Rob Kirkpatrick has written a warm and compelling biography of one of the best but least appreciated ballplayers in the history of our national pastime. Rob’s book is a beautiful celebration of a beautiful life.”—Timothy M. Gay, author of Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend
Buy it at:
Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble
Borders