Mark "the Bird" Fidrych passed away this past Monday, April 13, 2009.

Life can be what some might call "a real trip." As we grow, collect experiences, and just plain evolve, many of the elements around us take on new meanings or disappear altogether.

Remember the gym at your old high school? Now it's gone and the new campus bears no resemblance to where you enjoyed or despised your high school years. That's a piece of you gone forever except for the memories.

Well, for the baseball fan in me (established in 1969), Fidrych's passing fits into that category.

It is always a shock to hear such news about someone so familiar to one's youth. I mean, this guy was one of those pitchers that when one recalls his antics in the stories told to the younger generation, they probably wouldn't believe a word of it!

Growing up in Richmond, Calif., I was in close proximity to the legendary Oakland A's baseball champions of the early '70s and went to many home games from 1971-76. Known for their colorful owner Charles O. Finley, and an even more colorful cast of characters on the squad, the A's were the true meaning of a bickering family that got down to business when the bright lights came on.

But, they all paled in comparison to "the Bird" with his constant self-encouragement to keep the ball down in the strike zone, or his landscaping techniques consisting of getting on his hands and knees to smooth out the dirt on the pitcher's mound with his bare hands.

On one occasion during the '76 season, I had the pleasure of taking my usual bleacher seat in right field at the Oakland Coliseum to see Fidrych pitch for the lowly Detroit Tigers. It was like going to a Prince concert; its one thing to see him on "Soul Train," but altogether different to snap back into the reality that you were actually seeing this guy in the flesh!

Fidrych did not disappoint, as all of his actions were as they were on the NBC Game of the Week and, furthermore, this guy could really pitch! I mean Fidrych rarely tossed a pitch above the knees, threw regularly at 93 mph, and could change speeds with the best of them.

I don't remember all of the details, but I recall that the A's won a hard-fought, low-scoring game in extra innings, and I left thinking that Fidrych was great even in defeat and really difficult to beat.

Okay, I must admit, I've always been a stat freak when it comes to baseball. I mean I used the averages I saw in the sports page at the age of eight to recognize the relationships in numbers, and I mastered my multiplication tables almost overnight (i.e., 3/11 is 27.3% because the second baseman had three hits in 11 bats for .273 average….simple enough, right?).

That said, baseball-almanac.com has the box score of games from a long, long time ago and there it was, the box score that showed Fidrych hooked up with Oakland's Mike Torrez in a pitching duel that went 12 innings as Oakland won, 2-1.

To find that information on such a talent is amazing on a number of levels. Not only did it bring to life the memory of Fidrych and that game, but also the roar of the unusually large crowd (also listed in the box score at 25,659 … large for the A's since attendance, never good even when they were winning titles, had gone to hell with the trade of Reggie Jackson and Ken Holtzman to Baltimore that season). It also allowed me to reflect quickly on that particular A's team managed by Chuck Tanner, later the manager of Pittsburgh's "We are Family"-Willie Stargell led Pirates, the '79 World Series champs.

According to baseball-almanac.com, that team stole 341 bases, and they're right. I remember listening to all of the games of the 1976 "post-champion" A's on my transistor radio and being so disappointed that, despite their lack of punch at the plate (.246, pretty much the Oakland A's always hit as a team back then, despite three straight titles) and possessing just two solid starters in Mike Torrez and Vida Blue, they just missed the play-offs, but that team ran, ran and ran some more! 

This is what the game of baseball has always been to me – a flood of good memories and Fidrych's one season of greatness was a big part of that. The Tiger sensation filled the seats everywhere he pitched in a 19-9 season and that, combined with his league-leading 2.34 ERA, made him the obvious choice for the AL Rookie of the Year.

He was also second to the great Jim Palmer in the Cy Young vote, and even more remarkable, given all of the annoying specialist roles pitchers hold in today's game, Fidrych threw six straight complete games on three different occasions, had 24 complete games for the season, and he won eight straight games during one stretch.

Did I mention that he was elected to start the All-Star Game that season, which he lost, (but who cares, it's the All-Star game) and that this was all accomplished in spite of spending the first month of the season in the minors?

Simply put, it may be a long, long time before we see another pitcher capture the sports world's imagination and compile such an accomplished season, as a rookie no less, like "the Bird."