The passing of Mark Fidrych yesterday at the age of 54 was a reminder of a bygone era. Baseball always had its eccentrics, its flakes, lovable characters who contributed lore beyond the numbers. Over the last half-century, the game has given us the likes of Vic Power, Jimmy Piersall, Dock Ellis, Bill Lee and Fidrych.

Today there is so much at stake financially to risk being anything but all business as a baseball player. The incidents that might show character flaws and quirks seem to be limited to DUIs and occasional behavior that cries out for anger management. Fidrych surfaced at a different time, one of the last of a host of colorful characters in the game.

There was Power, the flamboyant first baseman who was the master of blowing super-sized bubbles with his gum while fielding one-handed -- a common practice today, but one that drove the game’s fundamentalists crazy in the 1950s and ’60. Power was as fascinating off the field as he was on it.

A player of color from Puerto Rico, where racism was far less overt, Power dated white women and refused to be confined by the prejudice he faced in the United States. He was known to be colorblind in using whites-only restrooms in the South. Once a waitress informed him that her restaurant didn’t serve Negroes, to which Power replied, “That’s okay, I don’t eat Negroes. I just want some rice and beans.” He was to be the first black Yankee in the early 1950s, but he didn’t fit the franchise’s staid personality and failed to reach the majors until 1954 with the Kansas City A’s.

Piersall, who poignantly documented his battle with mental illness in the book Fear Strikes Out -- at a time such ills were kept in the closet -- also had a sense of humor. When he hit the 100th home run of his career, Piersall ran the bases backwards. Afterwards he said, “That way I can see where I’ve been. I always know where I’m going.”

The 1960s gave us Ellis and Lee. Ellis wore curlers in his hair during pregame warmups, a practice that infuriated traditionalists long before Manny’s dreadlocks. Ellis claimed he threw his 1970 no-hitter against San Diego on LSD, thinking he wasn’t going to pitch that day. Four years later, upset at the way the Cincinnati Reds had spoken about his Pittsburgh teammates, he decided to hit as many Reds as possible to open a May start. Ellis was taken out of the game after hitting Pete Rose, Joe Morgan and Dan Dreissen, throwing two pitches behind Tony Perez’s head and two more at Johnny Bench.

Lee earned the nickname Spaceman for his eccentric ways and colorful quotes. He occasionally threw a high, lofting blooper pitch to mess with hitters’ timing, though one went for a Tony Perez home run in Boston’s Game 7 loss to the Reds in the 1975 World Series. During his years with the Red Sox, he nicknamed manager Don Zimmer “the gerbil,” an insult he used widely in public. Lee was a free spirit who often alienated himself from teammates and especially managers. When asked about the age-old strife between managers and pitchers, Lee responded that “most of the managers are lifetime .220 hitters.” His response to mandatory drug testing in baseball? "I said I believed in drug testing a long time ago. All through the ‘60s I tested everything."

Fidrych, of course, was known for grooming the mound on his knees, exuberantly recognizing teammates who made fine fielding plays behind him and talking to baseballs. The lanky right-hander with floppy curls, which earned him the Sesame Street-induced nickname “Big Bird,” credited baseballs for having a life of their own. Sometimes when he gave up a hit, he returned the ball to the umpire and asked for another, explaining that it still had hits left in it.

Players didn’t see Fidrych as a contrived act. He was recognized for being as genuine and sincere as anyone in the game -- one of the most likable guys around. When he burst onto the scene in 1976, going 19-9 and winning Rookie of the Year honors, he also became a fan favorite who filled baseball parks across the country.

There may be as many Fidrych stories as baseball players. Tony Oliva, one of the game’s great pure hitters in the 1960s, has his. After eight productive seasons with the Twins from 1964 through 1971, which seemed to put him on course for the Hall of Fame, Oliva suffered a devastating knee injury in ’71. He was never the same after that, though he played for parts of five more seasons.

In his final big league campaign in 1976, when Oliva played part-time and batted only .211 in 123 at-bats, he collected one last four-hit game on July 20. On the mound that day was Fidrych, the 21-year-old phenom who led the majors with a 2.34 ERA that summer and was by then garnering national attention.

Against the Twins, Fidrych scattered 10 hits and went the distance for an 8-3 victory, improving to 11-2, but Oliva stroked four singles and hit a bullet against him the first time he came to the plate. Suddenly Big Bird was on his way to first base, which initially startled the veteran. Oliva soon discovered that the eccentric rookie didn’t limit his on-field praise to teammates.

“He came over and shook my hand,” Oliva recalled with a laugh during a conversation with this writer in 2006. “’I have to learn how to pitch to you,’ he said. He surprised me, but he was a nice, young man.”