Two For Tuesday: June 30, 2026

I have always loved this shot of Mark “The Bird” Fidrych and Big Bird. Both the composition and the colors are remarkable, as we see two figures walking away from the camera, chatting as if two old friends catching up. Which, they were.

Although I’m too young to remember “The Summer of The Bird”, I am old enough to remember when his baseball cards, and his larger-than-life personality, still resonated with collectors and baseball fans. He was probably the first example I knew of “a character” in sports. And Big Bird was perhaps my favorite character on my first favorite show. So this Joe McNally photo has always resonated with me, as I’ve seen it several times over the years.

But a while back I saw the photo and a link to the photographer’s blog and the beautifully written Goodbye, Bird. Sometimes the stories behind the images can be as powerful as the images themselves and “Goodbye, Bird” is a great example of that.