In 1976, I lived in the Aspen Hills apartments
on 900 East near 3900 South with
Steve Jimas. Steve died recently, but everyone
who knew him would tell you that he
was not only a great guy, he was a character,
too. When you’re young and you work in
your dad’s Utah state package liquor store
selling hooch to hardcore miners, it’s easy
to develop the personality of a character.
Dave Wiechman and Joe Stilinovich, two
more characters, lived in another unit. All
of us went to Bingham High School. All of
us knew our share of crazy people.
As much as I’d like to tell a Wiechman
story or two, it wouldn’t be right in that he’s
much closer to his church these days. Plus, I
don’t need reminding that he didn’t mind a
good fistfight (for people born after 1960, a
“fistfight” was an archaic way of settling a
score. Guns do that now). Dave was known
to fight at the Westerner—not with the cowboys,
but with the bouncers. In other words,
certifiably crazy. His roommate Joe was a
laughing machine. Joe laughs, you laugh.
One summer night in 1976, Joe called and
said he was coming over to watch “The
Bird” pitch on Monday Night Baseball. I
didn’t know what he was talking about.
Joe arrived and kept chiding me about
The Bird. How come I’d never heard of him?
Did I live in a cave? I was a bartender. I
knew cocktails and the New York Yankees.
I think they were playing the Yankees that
night, so that’s probably why I agreed to
watch the game with him. I remember the
pre-game hype and learned The Bird had
a name, Mark Fidrych, and that he was
having a rookie year like no other. All the
while, Joe was laughing.
I never knew why until I saw Fidrych.
He had a lanky gait and paced around the
mound. He tamped the mound dirt just so
and seemed to caress it with his hands. He
talked to the baseball. His curly hair sprang
beneath his cap. He fidgeted. His delivery
seemed within the bounds of physics,
yet not quite right—like a paper airplane
that didn’t quite follow the instructions.
With every Fidrych move and motion, Joe
laughed. Coupled with the fact that Joe
has one of the most colorful swear-word
vocabularies I’ve ever encountered, I was
soon laughing, too.
I’ve always remembered that night with
Joe. I remember how good Fidrych made me
feel, because I wasn’t laughing at The Bird
I was laughing because Mark Fidrych was
playing outside the lines. In a game of suffocating
rules, order and statistics, Fidrych
was reminding all of America—the same
America that had recently abandoned
Vietnam and was
still reeling from
Richard Nixon’s
Watergate presidency—
how good it feels
to be independent
and free.
Sports pundits say
Fidrych was a character,
an oddball. As
such, he was among
that lucky group that
mostly charms us,
but sometimes fails
us, too. His reputation was heightened
because baseball is otherwise so rigid. Like
all good characters, Fidrych was also a
person of complete honesty about who he
was and how he came to be that way. He
faked nothing. He was just being himself.
How odd, then, that we considered the act
of being true to oneself as odd. Odder still,
is that our culture is weaning itself of individual
behavior. School must be boring as
hell these days. My theory is it started with
yellow buses and blossomed when chalkboards
replaced blackboards.
If Fidrych played today, people would
be scared. However, it will be quite some
time before we even plant another Fidrych,
let alone cultivate one. Manny Ramirez of
the Los Angeles Dodgers is deemed a character,
but Manny is pretty much alone in
that department. As such, his antics are
regarded as destructive, not fun or colorful.
Sports has historically been home to
lots of such people, those who beat their
own drum without losing their excellence—
Babe Ruth, John McEnroe, George
Foreman, Dennis Rodman, Charles Barkley,
Yogi Berra. In what other profession can a
marijuana advocate nicknamed Spaceman
(Bill “Spaceman” Lee formerly of the Boston
Red Sox) make an honest living?
Well, there’s journalism for one. Lots of
characters around here, certainly. But, even
this bastion of all things wet and wild is
noticing fewer takers willing to partake in
political incorrectness, improper manners
and pissing people off. Politics and law formerly
provided their share of colorful participants.
But, who around
here since J. Bracken
Lee (former Utah governor
and Salt Lake City
mayor whose bluntness
won more enemies than
friends) or Chief Judge
Willis Ritter (who is said
to have lost his pants in a
Club Manhattan game of
strip poker) can be said
to be anything approaching
a colorful character?
Ralph Becker?
At Little League baseball games, the
catcher can’t tease the batter. Parents can’t
razz the umpires. Joe Stilinovich’s brother
Tony coached Bingham High School to
an American Legion championship—amid
legendary tirades at the umpires and with a
cigarette hanging from his lips. Now, there
was a character. The last Utahn accused of
being colorful was Dell Schanze, and look
what it got him.
Outside of base jumpers and body piercers,
our society lacks risk takers. Our friends
are conveniently catalogued on Facebook
and we never invite them to dinner. We only
play inside the lines lest we draw attention
to ourselves. We argue anonymously on the
Internet, which beats accountability. Mark
Fidrych was killed on his farm April 13. If he
tried to make it into baseball today, they’d
have him committed. Yet, he was perfectly
normal. That’s odd, isn’t it?