Jeff Agase Agase dreams of one day
stirring UCLA into the frenzy of Agasemania. Slap him in the face
and wake him up by e-mailing him at [email protected].
The pitcher sprints from the dugout to start the sixth inning.
Before throwing a warmup pitch, he goes down on his knees and, like
a child building a sandcastle, begins to groom the dirt of the
pitcher’s mound with his bare hands.
What is he doing?
The pitcher fires a fastball by a helpless batter and breaks
into a ridiculous shimmy in celebration of yet another strikeout,
gyrating his hips and pelvis to the delight of more than 40,000
fans.
Who is this guy?
The pitcher hangs a curveball over the plate. It is hit hard,
but his trusty shortstop snags the screeching line drive. The
inning is not over, but the pitcher walks over to his teammate and
fervently shakes his hand.
This is starting to get weird.
The pitcher has just one more batter to face before ending
another 1-2-3 inning. But he remembers the last time this batter
came up, and he remembers that the baseball he now holds was hit
for an RBI double. The pitcher calmly throws the cursed ball back
to the umpire and requests a new one. But before rocketing another
heater up high for an inning-ending strikeout, the pitcher talks to
the ball, telling it where it will go.
Can somebody explain what is going on here?
It’s August 1976, and countless unthinkable events will go
down. In November, a peanut farmer will be elected leader of the
free world. Just a month ago, our rebellious misfit of a country
celebrated its bicentennial (teach those Brits to add an extraneous
“u” to “color”). Gas prices have even
skyrocketed to an absurdly high $1.46 per gallon.
But this summer, Tiger Stadium is the place to find the most
bizarre spectacle to hit the sports world.
A bird is pitching. Actually, The Bird is pitching. A
22-year-old kid from Worcester, Mass., by the legal name of Mark
Fydrich and the bestowed moniker of “The Bird” is on
his way to the American League Rookie of the Year Award and a 19-9
record.
The fans won’t remember his league-leading 2.34 ERA or his
unbelievable 24 complete games. What they will remember are his
wacky antics, endearingly unorthodox personality, and more than
anything else, the all-too-brief stint when Birdmania captivated a
nation.
By 1977, The Bird’s career had gone south. He tore
cartilage in his knee and was never again the brilliant pitcher he
had been for one year. Fydrich’s flash in the pan was
blindingly bright ““ for a year.
Now, 25 years later, a new mania is sweeping the Great
Northwest. Ichiromania. It’s not a new trading card game
that’s emptying the wallets of children and parents alike.
It’s 27-year-old Japanese rookie and Mariners right fielder
Ichiro Suzuki.
Tipping the scales at a hefty 157 pounds while sporting the
frame of an LPGA golfer, Ichiro (he prefers the Cher/Madonna thing)
has stormed into Major League Baseball as one of the more enjoyable
personalities in some time. Like The Bird, Ichiro ranks highly in
statistical categories normally reserved for veterans. His 72 hits
and 15 stolen bases lead the majors, and his .367 batting average
puts him in the top five of the AL.
But also like The Bird, it has been the fanatical following of
Ichiro that has captured the attention of the sports world. Droves
of Asian American fans in the Seattle area show up at Safeco Field
to gawk over a man who can safely be considered the David
Hasselhoff of Japan.
A Japanese magazine offered $2 million for a nude photograph,
but Ichiro chooses to change in the locker room closet.
And all of this ““ the photos, the language barrier, the
followers ““ create the same kind of mania The Bird brought to
Detroit 25 years ago.
But mania is by no means new to baseball. Los Angeles has been
the stomping ground for two of the more rabid mania to infect
baseball in the last 20 years.
The year that same peanut farmer bowed out of office after one
disappointing term, Fernandomania swept the City of Angels. A tubby
rookie who vaguely resembled Ponch from CHiPs took the hill for the
Dodgers and took a pen out to rewrite the record books.
Fernando Valenzuela had a trademark eye roll to the sky while
winding up to deliver one of his stupefying screwballs, driving
batters to rage and fans to delirious delight. Dodger Stadium
became a fiesta the nights Fernando pitched, and the fans showed up
in record numbers to see the spectacle that was Fernandomania.
Never mind the fact that Fernando, one of 12 children in a Mexican
farming family, won NL Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young Award in
1981. It was the mystique, not the numbers, that brought the
largest crowd in seven years to Dodger Stadium that year.
Fernandomania had become an all-out phenomenon in Los Angeles.
His shaggy hair and interviews with an interpreter made him only
more appealing to fans desperate for something different. Angelenos
stopped each other in the street just to talk about the mysterious
left-hander and how his junk pitches had all of baseball puzzled
and fascinated.
And that’s what mania is. If nothing else, it’s
different. Sure, Fernando won many games in his career, but wins
and losses aren’t what the fans remember. They remember the
five or so years when Dodger Stadium was the hippest place in L.A.,
when a ticket to the game meant more than just baseball, it meant
an experience.
It’s the same thing fans remember from 1995 when Nomomania
swept Los Angeles. Japanese rookie Hideo Nomo pitched masterfully
in his first three seasons. His dramatic windup was perfect for
baseball fans who were hungry for a new attraction.
Unfortunately for Nomo, that same drawn-out windup eventually
led opposing managers to send even the portliest of runners to
successfully steal bases. His career fizzled, sending him in 2000
to the equivalent of baseball purgatory ““ Detroit. Nomo threw
a no-hitter this year for the Red Sox, but he will forever be
associated with the mania he ushered into baseball.
Mania distract us, if only momentarily, from the monotony of the
big-time contracts, big-time egos, and big-time boredom of
baseball. Mania make us watch. Mania make us care.
And whether it’s a pitcher talking to a ball, a puny
Japanese rookie running from a herd of photographers, or a crowd of
jubilant fans swinging at a piñata in a Dodger Stadium fiesta,
mania, as short as they usually last, make baseball fun.
And isn’t that what it was supposed to be?