Remembering Bob Feller on Memorial Day 2012

On Memorial Day weekend, Bill Livingston remembers Bob Feller and everything he stood for

Published: Saturday, May 26, 2012, 5:09 PM Updated: Saturday, May 26, 2012, 5:56 PM

By Bill Livingston, The Plain DealerThe Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- He would sit in the third row at the end of the middle section of the press box at Progressive Field.

It is a seat no one else will ever sit in because such a local and national legend had warmed it for so long. When something was on his mind, Bob Feller would wave you over to sit and talk about it.
"We had a saying when we'd slaughter pigs on the farm back in Iowa. We'd say we used every part of the pig but the oink. Baseball is selling every part but the oink," said Feller, who wanted such goings-on to stop.

The issue several years ago was a plan to put advertisements for the upcoming movie, "Spider-Man 2," on the bases at major-league parks. It didn't seem that big a deal to me, considering the walking billboards NASCAR drivers resemble and the ads that cluttered the fences of major-league parks in years gone by.

But the opposition of traditionalists such as Feller meant the idea never really got started. Major League Baseball quickly scrapped the idea.

That was Feller. He knew Babe Ruth; pitched to Ted Williams; lived through the Great Depression, the biggest economic mess the country was ever in; and fought in World War II, the biggest conflict in which it was ever engaged. But, even though he was in his 80s when Spider-Man tried to cobweb the bases, Feller stayed as current as each morning's news.

Because sports are mostly a pleasant break from the demands of everyday life, I usually only talked to Feller about baseball. When Jaret Wright was quite the young phenom in 1997, Feller showed me how to throw the overhand curveball that had made Bob such a devastating pitcher. It complemented one of the fastest balls ever thrown. Three times, it made him utterly unhittable in big-league games. Feller thought Wright needed to develop that pitch.

"It's like pulling down a window shade," Feller would say, reaching back, far over his head. That "out" pitch for Feller, of course, would have been a wild pitch, diving into the dirt 55 feet from the rubber, for most men.

I did talk to Feller about his service in the Navy before the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor in 1991. Feller had enlisted the day after the 1941 Japanese attack, in the prime of his career, although, with his father dying of brain cancer, he did not have to because he was the sole support of his family.
Extraordinary in what he did over 60 feet, 6 inches of a manicured diamond, Feller always emphasized the comparative ordinariness of what he did as a gun captain of the battleship Alabama.
He never liked being called a war hero.

"The heroes are the ones who didn't come home. I was a survivor," he said
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On the Pearl Harbor Day of my lifetime, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, I called Feller for his reaction. He did not disappoint. Noting that it is impossible to stop some suicide attacks, he said that was because "they think they'll come back after they die as a daisy or petunia or whatever the hell it is they believe."

Politically, religiously and unequivocally incorrect -- that was Feller.

The day after Feller died in December of 2010, I appeared on "NewsHour" on PBS to talk about him. I was honored. Although I disagreed with him on many subjects, Bob Feller was the greatest American I ever knew.

Yet when Veterans Day neared in 2011, another war veterans piece I had planned went unwritten. I rummaged around the house for an information packet Feller's son, Steve, had sent me months before about a planned congressional salute to his father and others. I had misplaced it and was too embarrassed to contact Steve again. I feebly rationalized not writing about it, telling myself it was football season, which was far more interesting than some politicians' resolution.

Now another national patriotic holiday, Memorial Day, draws near. The Indians will be playing the Royals on Memorial Day Monday at the ballpark with the empty third-row seat in the press box. Amid the hot dogs and fireworks, many Americans will remember those who did not come back from war.

Along with a lot of Indians fans, I'll think of one who did. Feller lived here until he died at the age of 91, occasionally riling us, sometimes making us smile, and best of all inspiring us.
Freedom wasn't free in Bob Feller's day, and it won't be free tomorrow or the days after that, either. We occasionally need to be reminded of that. I know I do.