My favorite memory of the Rev. Louis Coleman was sitting with him at the funeral of Pee Wee Reese, the Kentuckian who was captain and shortstop of the immortal Brooklyn Dodgers “Boys of Summer” teams from the late 1940s and early ‘50s.

To his eternal credit, Reese befriended Jackie Robinson when Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947. This was a much bigger deal then than it might seem now, because in those days racial segregation was a way of life throughout the U.S., and not just the Deep South.

The rednecks among Robinson’s teammates didn’t want to play with him and threatened to boycott. But their respect for Reese was even greater than their distaste of Robinson. So when Pee Wee embraced Jackie, everyone else fell into line, sooner or later.

It was ugly on the road, though. Whenever the Dodgers ventured outside the New York City area, Robinson was subjected to taunts and threats by both the fans and opposing players. In one memorable instance in Cincinnati’s Crosley Field, the booing became so vicious that Reese walked over and put his arm around Robinson, a simple act with enormous implications.

After Pee Wee retired and settled down in Louisville, I had the privilege of getting to know him as a friend. So did Louis Coleman, who played baseball as a youngster with Pee Wee’s son, Mark.

Pee Wee died on Aug. 14, 1999, and on the day of his funeral at Southeast Christian Church, I ran into Louis in the parking lot. We were both alone. “Come on,” Louis,” I said. “Let’s sit together. I think Pee Wee and Jackie would like the idea of a black man and a white man sitting together.”

And so we did. We nudged each other whenever we’d see one of Pee Wee’s former teammates. Sandy Koufax was there. So were Duke Snider, Don Newcombe, Carl Erskine, Don Zimmer, and Tommy Lasorda.

After the service, Louis and I shook hands, each to return to his place in the world. For me, it was writing newspaper columns. For Louis, it was something infinitely more important. He had some souls to save, some drug dealers to put out of business, some victims of discrimination to defend.

Louis and I were more or less the same age. He was 64 when he died on Saturday, July 5, and I’ll be 65 on Saturday. We always enjoyed seeing each other because we shared a lot of memories. We both were big fans of Muhammad Ali. We both liked baseball. We both remembered the days when Kentucky’s public schools were segregated.

A couple of summers ago, I visited Louis in his office at the Justice Resource Center in Louisville’s West End. It was almost like a trip to a museum because the walls were covered with old photos and posters. Because of his work as a “social activist,” as the newspapers always called him, Louis was friends with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and comedian-turned-activist Dick Gregory.

Armed with his trademark bullhorn, Louis was sure to show up whenever there was a cause with a photo op. His enemies in Kentucky’s white establishment – and he had a ton of them – tried to dismiss him as little more than an opportunist and publicity hog. They wondered cynically about where he got his backing and the education that qualified him to be a minister.

But his admirers – and he had a ton of those, too – loved it when he find a reason to stage a protest outside some upper-crust, white-dominated enclave. Once he set up a lemonade stand outside the blueblood Louisville Country Club to protest its discriminatory membership policy. He could be a royal pain in the butt, and he knew it, but he usually got results because he was impossible to ignore.

My main criticism of Louis, and I told him this, was that he didn’t do a very good job of picking his spots. He sometimes didn’t separate the important issues from the trivial ones, which played into the hands of his enemies. He became a caricature of himself, diluting his effectiveness.

I always defended Louis, except when he got snookered into frivolous protests, because he was one of the few people I’ve ever met who not only talked the talk, but walked the walk. Nobody will ever know how many nights he spent on street corners in the West End, trying to keep drugs and guns out of the hands of kids.

As bombastic and combative as he could be in public, Louis was surprisingly quiet and gentle in private. He was a thoughtful and kind man who, liked untold African-American leaders, followed the principled, non-violent teachings of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Heaven only knows how many times Louis was locked up or refused admittance to an elected official’s office. He viewed such annoyances as just that, an occupational hazard. But whatever the obstacles that confronted him, he never seemed to get discouraged. When he grabbed hold of an issue, he wouldn’t let go until it got resolved, one way or another.

He seemed to take a bit of pride in being viewed as a colossal pain in the butt because that told him his work was having the desired effect on the power structure. And he was right in believing that every city, especially one as comfortable with the status quo as Louisville, needed somebody like him to be the community conscience.

So Coleman wouldn’t let the elite forget about the foul air and horrible living conditions in Rubbertown. He wouldn’t let us enjoy a PGA Golf Championship until we had met our responsibilities in minority hiring. He wouldn’t let the haves turn their backs on the have-nots.

As for his credentials as a minister of God, well, I suggest we ask the poor folks for whom he helped find food, clothing, and housing. I suggest we ask the street kids whom he kept away from the drug pushers. I suggest we ask the families he helped protect by getting handguns off the street.

The Rev. Louis Coleman wasn’t perfect, by any means, but he did more good in his life than most of us. He loved the double play in baseball but despised the double standard in life. On my scorecard, he’ll always be a guy who played by the rules and made sure that everybody else did, too.