The back seat of Bob Feller’s car had suddenly become uncomfortable, because for six days I was still trying to ask the question I had to ask. I had followed Feller and his wife, Anne, across a continent in an adventure that extended from a Tuesday night at the Bomber Bowl in Richland, Wash., to a Sunday morning at a small shop in Cooperstown, N.Y., down the street from the Baseball Hall of Fame.

I had spent a night in a guest room in their home at Gates Mills, Ohio, outside Cleveland, where Feller had built one of the most overpoweringly successful pitching careers in the history of the game in his Hall of Fame career with the Indians. Anne had retrieved dusty posters and forgotten mementos from closets, took them to a do-it-yourself frame store and created a minimuseum.

From the back seat, I had experienced a drive through a late-night rainstorm and early-morning departures on the way to the next appearance. I had shared in their search for places far from interstate highways, where unscheduled inspections of rusted old farm equipment were conducted in the hope that he just might discover a gem to buy and take home. “But what would you do with it?” Anne said one day with alarm in her voice.

I had listened to the give-and-take with fans old enough to remember his battles with Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio and young enough to wonder if this aging gentleman seated behind a table had actually been as good as Dwight Gooden.