Mark Fidrych - Death

Death

According to the Worcester District Attorney's office, a family friend found Fidrych dead beneath his ten-wheel dump truck at his Northborough home around 2:30 p.m, April 13, 2009. He appeared to have been working on the truck at the time of the accident. Authorities said Fidrych suffocated after his clothes had become entangled with a spinning power takeoff shaft on the truck he was working on. The state medical examiner's office ruled the death an accident, according to a release from the Worcester District Attorney's office. "He appeared to have been working on the truck when his clothes became tangled in the truck's power takeoff shaft," District Attorney Joseph Early, Jr. said in a statement.

Joseph Amorello, owner of a road construction company who had occasionally hired Fidrych to haul gravel or asphalt, stopped by the farm to chat with him when he found the body underneath the dump truck. "We were just, in general, getting started for the season this week and it seems as though his truck was going to be needed. It looked like he was doing some maintenance on it," Amorello said in a telephone interview. "I found him under the truck. There's not much more I can say. I dialed 911 and that's all I could do."

Current Tiger manager Jim Leyland had fond memories of "The Bird" dating back to the times he managed him in 1978, 1980 and 1981, when Fidrych was trying to come back from the knee and shoulder injuries. "We drove to spring training in my van one year," Leyland said. "I drove up to Detroit from Toledo, picked him up, then drove him back to my house for the night. I remember how much he ate at breakfast the next morning. My mom kept fixing him eggs and the Bird kept eating them." Fidrych made 27 starts for Leyland’s Triple-A teams in 1980 and 1981. He made it back to the Tigers in 1980 and pitched his last complete game in the majors on September 2, with Leyland and his mother in the stands. "After the final out, he came over and handed the game ball not to me, but to my mother," Leyland said. "I couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe it. I’ve never forgotten it."