Lawyer's Childhood Baseball Idol, 'The Bird,' Helped Him Make Prizewinning Film
In 1976, Mike Cramer was 12 years old and the hottest rookie in baseball was Mark “The Bird” Fidrych of the Detroit Tigers.
Cramer, who is now an Illinois lawyer, was in Tigers Stadium on June 28 of that year, sitting literally in the last row in left field as Fidrych led the team to a 5-1 win over the top-ranked New York Yankees. The game, which was televised on ABC’s Monday Night Baseball, made Fidrych a household name, recounts the Herald Palladium.
Fidrych had made his Major League Baseball debut in May, after the scheduled pitcher got sick, and threw seven no-hit innings. By the end of the season he had won 19 games, started as an All-Star Game pitcher, and finished second, behind Jim Palmer, in voting for the Cy Young Award. The next year, he suffered a career-ending injury.
Fidrych went on to work as a truck driver and bought a 100-acre farm in Massachusetts, while Cramer grew up to become a successful lawyer and is now a a partner in the Chicago office of Ogletree Deakins Nash Smoak & Stewart. But he never forgot his childhood hero and eventually wrote him, decades later, with a proposal for a movie based on Fidrych’s life. The result was a prizewinning film, Dear Mr. Fidrych, the newspaper reports.
The real-life Fidrych died last year, in a freak accident under his truck, without ever having a chance to see the completed film.
Cramer, however, got to meet Fidrych repeatedly in the course of making the movie, at one point watching in awe as his own son, wearing Cramer’s 1976 Little League glove, played a game of catch with the baseball great.
For some, meeting a sports idol is a disappointment. But Fidrych proved even larger in later life than Cramer expected. Today, star rookies can make millions in their first season. Fidrych, who sold out the 1976 games in which he pitched, earned the $16,500 rookie minimum.
“He could have been bitter about how little money he made off of baseball,” Cramer tells the Herald Palladium. “But instead his attitude was, ‘I got to play in the major leagues! How cool is that?’ “
Cramer’s film will be shown on Sunday in Three Oaks, Mich. Read the full article for more information about where and when, and more details about how the movie was made.
Additional coverage:
Chicago Tribune (April 2009): “Chicagoan’s movie honors Mark Fidrych”
Updated on June 25 to include background information from Cramer and link to Tribune article.
