Remembering Bob Feller

Word has been circulating since last night that Hall of Fame major league baseball pitcher Bob Feller passed away last night. As is to be expected, Feller's death has been met with a cacophony of tributes and memorials, like this one, this one, and this one, among a ton of others. I'd like to add my own to the chorus.

While I did not grow up a Cleveland Indians fan, I grew up in Cleveland Indians country. Well, it was largely Cleveland Indians country and largely Cincinnati Reds country, with a smattering of Tigers and Cubs fans here and there, and proudly oddball types who rooted for other teams, like me, the Mets fan, and my best friend while growing up, who was a Pirates fan. The local radio station, though, was a Cleveland Indians affiliate, so there was considerable identification with the Cleveland team in town. I imagine in large part because of this, Cleveland pretty much became my favorite American League team. This was also aided by the fact that I could feel for the disappointments of Indians fans--something that studying the Brooklyn Dodgers only made more pronounced.

So, of course, given that I was a big baseball fan and that I grew up in Cleveland Indian land, I knew very well all about Bob Feller. And so, getting the chance to meet and talk baseball with Bob Feller was a highlight that I can still recall pretty vividly.

It was in the spring of 1995, and I was attending, along with my dad and a family friend, a conference commemorating the 100th birthday of Babe Ruth, held at Hofstra University. In addition to us academic types, the conference featured a lot of media members, like Dick Schaap and John Steadman, and ballplayers, including Robin Roberts, Enos Slaughter, Phil Rizzuto, Roy White, Ryne Duren, Ron Blomberg, and a whole lot of more that aren't in the list that's just coming off the top of my head as I write. Bob Feller was also in attendance at the conference, and during one social event, I ended up standing right next to him, so I introduced myself, told him it was a pleasure to meet him, and struck up conversation about that year's Cleveland Indians team. I remember Bob saying that he thought the lineup was very good but the pitching was a little suspect. Of course, the pitching, though indeed a little suspect, held out, and that would end up being the year the Indians finally made it back to the World Series for the first time since 1954, when Feller was still playing for the team.

It's apparent from many things Feller has said that he and I have disagreed on a lot of things, like how to view Pete Rose's candidacy for the Hall of Fame, how to view contemporary ballplayers and how to view the military, how to view Muhammad Ali, and whom to support in the 2008 presidential election. Indeed, I think Feller and I have very different ways of seeing the world that are very much reflected in these differences in opinion. That said, there are moments of agreement between Feller and me (though I'm sure that at least in part we did not arrive at those positions in the same ways). For example, Feller was as early as the mid-to-late 1950s a critic of baseball's labor structure. Also, Feller, who is white, barnstormed with black ballplayers before major league baseball integrated in the late 1940s.

In the end, I'm not going to celebrate Feller as a patriot, a saint, or anything like that, as so many tributes are doing. Feller, like me, and like all of us, was a product of his times and his cultures, and I'm not going to gloss over disagreements I have with him or limitations I think exist in the opinions he has offered, nor am I going to overemphasize the things about which I agreed with him as if they constitute some kind of greatness. What I will say is that Feller was an outstanding baseball player--in my mind (and I know the minds of many others) one of the greatest pitchers of all time--and a person who seemed pretty down to earth ... at least down to earth enough to think nothing of engaging in a conversation about his specialty with a 22-year-old no-name like me.