On May 15, 1976, Mark Fydrich made his first major league start for the Detroit Tigers against the Cleveland Indians. He had a no-hitter through six innings and finished with a two-hit, complete game win, 2-1.

But that was only the beginning of what proved to be one of the most exciting and historic rookie seasons in Major League history. He finished the year 19-9, with 24 complete games and back-to-back eleven-inning complete-game victories. He won Rookie of the Year and started the All-Star Game for the American League.

Beyond his baseball prowess, Mark "the Bird" Fydrich was a national phenomenon because he was so weird. Well, at least quirky. He would talk to the ball on the mound. He'd walk circles around the mound after every out. He patted down the mound, refusing to let the grounds crew work on it after the sixth inning.

1976 was the year of the nation's bicentennial celebration. Watergate and the pardon of Richard Nixon were still fresh on everyone's mind.

1976 marked the presidential campaign season between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

In that year, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak formed Apple Computer Company.

It was also the summer of the Montreal Olympics, where we were introduced to athletes who would transcend sports and become touchstones of American culture—Nadia Comăneci, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Bruce (now Caitlyn) Jenner. The whole summer was pretty well filled with images of larger-than-life people.

But it would have been difficult to be larger than Mark "the Bird" Fydrich in the summer of 1976.

But 1976 turned out to be the high-water mark for “the Bird.” After a Spring Training injury heading into the 1977 season, Mark Fydrich recovered and picked up right where he left off, going 6-2 and headed toward another outstanding season. On July 4th, however, he was removed from a game against the Baltimore Orioles after 5.2 innings with a dead arm. He was never the same, dropping out of baseball entirely after only five seasons. It wasn't until 1985 that he was diagnosed with a torn rotator cuff.

Can you imagine that, though? One minute, you're on top of the world, the next, you've got a dead arm, and nobody can figure out why you're no good anymore.

But I've often wondered how Mark Fydrich dealt with that mysterious decline. I know he had to have been bewildered, frustrated, and depressed. Who wouldn't be?

It must have felt like that moment on a roller-coaster where you're climbing and climbing, and because of the curve of the tracks, you can't see the top. It feels like you're going to climb forever … until, seemingly out of nowhere, the tracks change direction, and you're hurtling downhill at heart-racing speeds, having realized that you left your stomach somewhere back on the summit.

We're all morbidly fascinated by that kind of riches-to-rags story, aren't we? Admittedly, I won't go to a movie if I know that's the storyline. Who needs that kind of depressing stuff in their life?

Still, it's hard not to imagine yourself reaching the top, only to find out there’s nothing in front of you but pain and humiliation.

Like George Costanza on Seinfeld talking about how he didn't want to win the lottery because he was convinced that the universe was rigged against him … and if he won, he was convinced that the universe would balance out his good luck by giving him cancer or some other horrible malady.

Do you ever wonder whether people in that situation have any inkling that what looks like a great world right now is fixin' to turn exceedingly grim soon?

Or, as Warden Norton in The Shawshank Redemption had cross-stitched on his wall, covering the private safe with the records of his embezzlement, “His judgment cometh and that right soon.”

And that, my friends, is about where we are this morning with the prophet Amos.

Amos has the fourth of four prophetic visions in our passage this morning. Last week it was the plumb line. This week, Amos sees a basket of summer fruit.