A B Happy Chandler

Danny Gardella, a former major league baseball player best known for his early effort to overturn the game's reserve clause, has died. He was 85. Gardella died of congestive heart failure March 6 at a hospice in Yonkers, N.Y. Gardella's 1947 lawsuit was the first significant challenge to baseball's exemption from federal antitrust law and foreshadowed later attempts to change labor relations in baseball.

That the first time is always fondly remembered is a truism of baseball writers and spring training. And so, without further ado, let it be recorded that on Feb. 14, 1947, the plane carrying the New York Yankees and a 21-year old sports writer left LaGuardia Airport for San Juan, P.R., and an adventure still bright in memory 38 years later. San Juan was only the first stop for the Yankees on this unusual spring training trip planned by Col. Larry MacPhail, part-owner of the club.

Bob Feller, an Iowa farm boy who became one of baseball's most enduring stars as an overpowering pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, died Wednesday. He was 92. Feller, who was elected to the baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, died at a Cleveland-area hospice, the Indians said. He was diagnosed with leukemia in August and more recently was hospitalized with pneumonia. FOR THE RECORD: Bob Feller: The obituary of baseball Hall of Famer Bob Feller in the Dec. 16 LATExtra section said he was the first pitcher to throw three no-hitters.