I think I would've liked the man they called 'Killer'

My exposure to Harmon Killebrew was minimal. His final game came a year before I was born, and I can't recall him ever appearing at card shows when I attended those events growing up. As an avid collector with an insatiable appetite for baseball trivia as a seventh/eighth grader, if you'd asked me to name the 500 home run club (which, in the late '80s, consisted of just 14 men), I'd probably get 12 or 13 pretty easily, and then have to think longer to remember Killebrew. That's no fault of Killer's. I grew up in New Jersey; the Mets were my team. Baseball was long gone from Washington and the Twins were known for Kent Hrbek, Kirby Puckett, Dan Gladden and Frank Viola.

But I think Harmon Killebrew would've been the kind of player I really liked, an underdog of sorts among the game's greatest sluggers. He may have been listed at six feet tall, but it seems he was probably an inch or so shorter. If some photos I've seen today are dated correctly, he was bald before he was 30. And in recent years, while some of the living members of the 500 Home Run Club still look like they could give the ball a ride, he looked as much like your middle-school principal, your barber or your pharmacist as he did the 10th player to reach that long ball milestone.

My one encounter with Killebrew came before the 2004 All-Star Game, when MLB brought the living members of the 500 Home Run Club to Houston for the Home Run Derby. It was amazing being in the same room with all of those sluggers, not to mention the Commissioner of baseball and the top sportswriters in America. As I mentioned in that blog post, I considered asking some questions of a few of the legends, but with no assignment or specific questions in mind, I decided I'd rather get photos of each of the guys. I'm happy that I did, but looking back, it's unfortunate that 2004 was still the beginning of the digital age -- I was still working with a film SLR and had no way to know how my shots turned out until getting the prints back from the lab. My shot of Killebrew is OK, but the flash bounced off a few sportswriters in front of me, putting Killer in the shadows when he deserved the spotlight alongside his peers in that room.

The two times I met Bob Feller

I met Bob Feller twice, and in those two brief encounters, I saw a little of what all the stories and columns have been saying about him tonight.

The first meeting came when I was a young collector and he appeared at a local card show. I brought a cover of Beckett Baseball Card Monthly that had a drawing on the inside cover of Feller from the chest up, arms raised above his head in the first motion of his wind-up, over a background of a newspaper trumpeting his Opening Day no-hitter. Pulling the cover closer to him to sign in a rote motion repeated throughout the day, he paused when he saw the unique item and flipped it over to see what it was. We chatted about it for a moment after that -- I don't recall anything either of us said -- as he signed it. A great memory for a grade- or high-schooler with a Hall of Fame icon.

The second came in 2001 or '02, when I was covering the Lakewood BlueClaws. Feller spent most of the game signing on the concourse before he was led up to the press box to get something to eat. The few writers there took time out from watching the game to chat baseball with the legend. When a BlueClaws staff member asked what he would like to eat, he simply asked for two hot dogs with ketchup. For all his bravado and boastfulness, he could also be a man of simple tastes.

He'll be remembered for his blazing fastball, his three no-hitters and his Naval service, which began the day after Pearl Harbor when he enlisted of his own volition.

"I'm no hero," he said of his service. "Heroes don't come home from wars. Survivors come home from wars. I'm a survivor."

It's a comment that's been repeated often in these first few hours of remembrance, yet one that can't be said enough.