Baseball's One Hit Wonders
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2 min readThe Chicago Cubs proved in 2016 that miracles can happen in baseball. Sometimes, though, that magic happens to a single player for just a single season. For one brief, glorious year everything locks in for them. Hitters say the baseball looks like a beach ball, and they can hit it anywhere they want. Pitchers find themselves with pinpoint control and great movement on their pitches. What happens after that season ends? Well, sometimes injuries bring the player back down to their previous level; other times, there's just no explanation. Here, we take a look back at those players who caught lightning in a bottle for one amazing season.
Mark "The Bird" Fidrych (1954–2009)
Getty Images / Bettmann
One of the all-time great characters in baseball was also a one-season wonder. Fidrych had one of the greatest rookie seasons as a starting pitcher for the Detroit Tigers in 1976. "The Bird" had a record of 19-9 and led the league with an ERA of 2.34. He won the AL Rookie of the Year Award and finished second for the Cy Young Award behind Hall of Famer Jim Palmer. Fidrych became a star as much from his antics as his pitching. He would talk to himself and the ball; he would throw back balls that he said "had hits in them," asking that they be removed from the game. He would also crouch down and clean off cleat marks from the pitcher's mound. He was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone and in an Aqua Velva commercial. Fidrych started out pretty well in 1977 and had a record of 6-4 when he felt his arm go dead during a July 4th game. He was never the same after that injury, and he was out of baseball at age 25. "The Bird" died in a freak accident on his farm in 2009 at the age of 54.
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