45 years ago Tiger Stadium Monday Night Baseball with the Bird were you there?

Where were you 45 years ago, sitting in the bleachers? 47,855 fans packed Tiger Stadium to see the Bird pitch, Detroit vs. New York “Monday Night Baseball,” June 28, 1976.

The Yankees were in first place by a wide margin, with stars like Thurman Munson, Chris Chambliss, Graig Nettles, Mickey Rivers, and manager was Billy Martin. But none of that mattered on that crazy night. Detroit won 5-1. Mark Fidrych ended up with 19 wins, led the AL in complete games with 24, and ERA at 2.34. Happy memories.

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Yes on the game, no on the bleachers. I was 16, and my parents took me and a couple friends on a whim. Sat in the upper deck down the 1st baseline. It was a great call by my Dad to even suggest going at the last minute. We were one of many walk-ups that night. A great memory. Poor Bird...in the modern game he would have been shut down in August due to the amount of innings he pitched. 24 complete games is absurd. RIP Mark....We'll never forget.

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Originally Posted by CassTechGrad

Where were you 45 years ago...

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Because I don't keep a journal, I'm not sure where I was. But I remember vividly that a week later I was staying with friends in Traverse City, where on 4 July 1976 we watched TV coverage of Operation Thunderbolt, the hostage-rescue mission carried-out by commandos of the IDF at Entebbe Airport in Uganda.

P.S. The guy with the pancake hat and glasses might be Henry Normile, who at that time managed Verne's on Forest and Woodward. I'm pretty sure it's him... and Monday would have been his day off.

Mark Fidrych warming up before a 1980 game vs. the Milwaukee Brewers.

Yes, by luck I was. It was my last year of high school and I had to go earlier that summer because I had a summer job where I couldn't go in July/Aug.
I was in my usual seats - upper deck, row 1 of reserves, between home and 3rd. The curtain call was spontaneous of course, but nobody had really thought of leaving at that point.

Seeing Tiger Stadium full reminds me of all the Bat Day games I saw. I remember the PA announcer asking us kids to hold up our bats between innings. That was always quite a site. One year my sister and I were bummed because we got Jerry Lumpe & Dom Demeter, and they weren't even on the team anymore. A year later we would score Horton & Kaline, and all was right with the world.

Could you imagine a Bat Day in 2021 ? There would probably be 50 assault cases in the stands...by the parents !

I was at Keesler AFB in Biloxi, MS learning aircraft radio systems. Knew nothing at all about this until I got back in October or November and people for rambling on about some buffoon.

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Originally Posted by Meddle

I was at Keesler AFB in Biloxi, MS learning aircraft radio systems. Knew nothing at all about this until I got back in October or November and people for rambling on about some buffoon.

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Glad I was in Detroit having a great time watching the Bird while you were off playing with your toys.

I was 12. Didn't go to that game. Tried to get into the bleachers for another game before the All-Star break, but they were sold out. My dad and I went to one of the games he lost. I recall the second baseman for the Tigers committed an error that led to a run for the other team. Bird lost 1-0 or 2-1. Other than that disappointment, it was a magical summer. So proud as a Detroiter and excited to see him pitch in the All-Star game. Anybody have a complete record of his wins and losses? 19-9, man if he could have one of those losses turn into a win, he would have been a 20 game winner. RIP Bird.

I was there. It was Family Night, which was the promotion that year on Monday Nights, and the games started half an hour earlier. I was nine, but remember my dad would take us [[my sister and brother, my mom may have gone to this one) to those Family Night games, mostly because the Bird pitched those nights, and the owner was trying to put butts in the seats.

I saw him a few times that year, but this one's memorable, as it was the Yankees. Mickey Rivers played center and hit lead-off, but I remember him from a previous game when we were sitting in the lower bleachers in right and someone poured beer on his bald head [[i remember the splashing) from the upper porch as he chased one to the warning track. But more importantly Ron Leflore hit lead-off for the Tigers and was hitting about .330 and had a ton of stolen bases.

Then there was the Bird. The crowd was wild. I still have my program from this game and stopped keeping score somewhere in the sixth because there was so much going on. I even scrawled the attendance on the score sheet after they announced it. I remember walking down the ramps to the bathrooms with my little brother who had a big "The Bird is the Word" button on that seemed to dwarf his t-shirt. I still have that button in a box somewhere.

My dad knew these were somewhat magical games, [[a guy talking to the baseball and grooming the mound from his knees) and made a point to bring us to them, and as kids we all rant and raved about Mark Fidrych. I had seen Eddie Giaccomin pitch a 8-0 shut-out for the Red Wings in Olympia not long before and the crowd was wild that night too, so to me I was lucking out on wild Detroit crowds, thinking that was somewhat normal too.

That game stuck with me though as he beat the Yankees. He made the All-Star team. I got his Topps rookie card in a pack from Cunninghams in Grandland shopping center and Gr. River and Fenkell, and carried it around till it was all dog-eared. And later we followed the Bird heavily, even thru the injuries [[he was scheduled to pitch the second game of the Disco Demolition Night double-header in Comiskey Park a couple years later, but the Sox forfeit that one, since center field was piled a mile high with burning vinyl).

Then I flipped thru the channels one night about 20 years ago after coming home from the bar in Hamtramck and this very game was on ESPN Classics, and it all came back to me, although I had never forgotten it. It was played last year during the lockdown too, but the film seemed to become really grainy over the years. Bob Uecker is the color guy and he brings back all the details. It's worth a watch.

I saw his first home pitching appearance, mopping up in relief at the end of a sparsely attended loss to the Twins. I was sitting next to my sister and we were laughing at and goofing on this weird twitchy and lanky pitcher with this big golden 'fro. Little did we know what was to come in a few weeks.

Later in the season in August we saw an insane game featuring Fidrych vs. future Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry of the Texas Rangers. The game was super tight with each team going ahead by a run only to have the other team tie it up. The game went into the 9th tied 3-3 with both starters still on the mound - something that would never happen today.

The large crowd was already in a frenzy, but soon went ballistic when a pinch-hitting Willie Horton led off the bottom of the 9th with a huge walk-off home run off the facade of the upper deck bleachers in deepest left-center field. It's still one of the best Tigers games I've ever attended. Still have the "The Bird's The Word" button I bought outside the ballpark.

https://di2ponv0v5otw.cloudfront.net...1bd11be8e4.jpg

Those were such fun times in baseball, everybody from the fans to the players to even people who didn’t like baseball that much got a kick out of all of this happening. There’s so many times I wish we could just return with attitudes like that, just lighten up, enjoy the day and the people in it.

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Originally Posted by DetBill

Those were such fun times in baseball, everybody from the fans to the players to even people who didn’t like baseball that much got a kick out of all of this happening. There’s so many times I wish we could just return with attitudes like that, just lighten up, enjoy the day and the people in it.

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Kind of the opposite of what I'm reading about today. Trevor Bauer has been outspoken to the media and in tweets about what he thinks of almost everything and he's actually been pretty refreshing. Then today we get:
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/...lt-allegations

For our family, the day started in Gettysburg, PA. We were on our family vacation returning from Washington DC & had stopped the day before at the battlefield. We heard on the radio that Fidrych was pitching the next day on MNB. We begged our dad to rush home to take us to the game, which he reluctantly did. While he was complaining all the way, he secretly wanted to see the Bird pitch too. We arrived in Detroit about 1 pm. He stopped at Tiger Stadium to buy the tickets before heading home. We had just enough time to unpack, take a short nap, & head back downtown for the game. We were in the lower deck right field grandstand with posts blocking a bit of our vision. Of course what would Tiger Stadium be without them. The park was packed of people & energy. It was such an awesome experience. It was also the very first game we'd ever attended which made it even more special. I'm grateful to my dad for making the effort to take us to that game.