Baseball great Bob �Fireball� Feller, a man whose role in helping to integrate baseball's major leagues has largely been overlooked, died December 15th, 2010 from leukemia complications. 

Feller, unarguably one of baseball�s greatest pitchers, joined the Cleveland Indians, the only team he ever played for, in 1936 as a 17 year old high school junior. 

In 1938 he struck out 18 batters in one game, a modern era record he continues to share with Sandy Koufax and Don Wilson. He is considered to have thrown more pitches than any man in history and today his likeness resides in the Hall of Fame. 

At 92 Feller was from an era that far preceded the lives of many of today�s sportswriters and fans. His era is mostly recorded in dust covered magazines and grainy black and white photographs. I was born in 1947 and have no memory of Bob Feller as a player, though I do remember many of his contemporaries, specifically Minnie Minoso, whose picture school kids collected from ice cream cups served in the grade school cafeteria. 

But I did know Bob Feller. 

He and my mom attended the same church. 

A lifetime ago on a wintry December morning in Gates Mills, Ohio, my mom decided that was as good a morning as any for me to accompany her to church. 

St. Christopher�s was only a three or four minute walk from our house but still my sister and I begged off whenever possible. For some reason she was exempt that morning. 

Despite the foot of snow on the ground mom insisted I go and as I began to balk as we approached the front door she drew her service revolver and marched me POW style to church. That�s an exaggeration but you get the point. 

After a typically dreary service mom and I were talking with our next door neighbor Cy Paumier, who had just graduated from Ohio State and had played basketball there. 

Suddenly mom and Cy said almost in unison, �Oh there�s someone you should meet.� 

They guided me over to a fairly tall but large boned fellow. The term �corn-fed� was invented for guys just like this. 

�Bob I want you to meet my son.� 

Mom said to me, �Say hello to Bob Feller.� 

Even though Cy already knew Feller he laughed and couldn�t contain himself, �Fireball Feller!� he laughed. 

I looked at Feller with a blank look on my face but stuck my hand out. 

Feller extended his catcher�s mitt of a hand that swallowed mine and smiled. He knew I didn�t have a clue as to who he was and he didn�t seem to care. 

If my math is correct Feller must have been about 40. He was large and robust with a quietly confidant air about him-but very friendly. He had retired just three years earlier. 

As we put our coats on he asked me about sports and my interests. 

Then Cy, myself and Feller stepped outside the church. 

A group of kids were having a snowball fight in street and I ran out to join the fun. Cy and Fireball were right behind me. 

For several minutes the battle kept up and soon everyone�s overcoats were plastered with white dots from expended snowballs. We enjoyed few minutes of great fun before the grown-ups took the combatants, the young and not so young, by the arm and led them home for Sunday dinner. 

Over the next several years I often saw Feller on those occasions I found myself in church and sometimes we spoke-but it was not until many, many years later that I really learned who was Fireball Feller and why so many stood in awe of him. 

In a 2009 interview with Bob Costas conducted at Cooperstown, Feller related how in 1946, a year before Jackie Robinson was brought into the major leagues, he and Satchel Paige, who became a lifelong friend, organized a barnstorming tour of black and white professional baseball players. The purpose of the tour was to demonstrate to America that black players and white players skill levels were equal. 

Feller had just returned from four years service as a gunnery captain in the navy. He had been the first professional athlete to volunteer for the armed forces, appearing at the induction center on Monday, Dec. 8, 1941, just one day after the Pearl Harbor bombing. 

His time in the service taught him the injustices of the treatment of African Americans and he promised himself to do something about it when he returned home. 

In his interview Feller said he footed pretty much the entire bill for the tour; he chartered two DC-3�s (probably one of the few times Negro League players didn�t ride a bus to games) hired a doctor to accompany them and refused to include overtly racist white players. The teams of course were integrated. 

Some have reported that Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck asked Feller if he thought Satchel Paige was good enough to play in the major leagues, and that Feller responded, �Of course,� and with that, Veeck then hired Paige. 

But Veeck was an unusual owner. At one time he wanted to bring an entire Negro League team into the major leagues, so it seems unlikely he�d have questions about Paige�s ability. 

Veeck�s proposal to bring the Newark Eagles into the major leagues was soundly and angrily rejected by all the other owners and Commissioner Happy Chandler.

Feller was also the first president the Major League Baseball Players Assn, an organization that today is pound for pound this nation�s most powerful labor organization. 

Feller got in hot water once or twice after the press reported some statements he made that seemed to some racist. 

But if we can over look Jackie Robinson for testifying before congress against some of the very people who led demonstrations to force baseball to hire him, many of whom were black and ultimately went to prison for expressing their political beliefs, Feller should easily and likewise be forgiven. 

May a good always man be remembered. 

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Jean Damu is the Acting Western Coordinator for N'COBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America and he chairs the California Coalition for H.R. 40, Congressman John Conyers' African-American Reparations Study Bill.  Click here to contact Mr. Damu.