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Baseball Legends
Bob Feller
Bob Feller was so much a standout in his prime that it is impossible to compare him with pitchers of later years. Only Sandy Koufax and Nolan Ryan could match his blazing fastball, and I'm hard-pressed to remember anyone who could match his curveball.
—Earl Weaver
Perhaps the hardest-throwing pitcher in baseball history, Bob Feller was one of the game's greatest strikeout kings. He exploded onto the major league scene in 1936 as a fireballing 17-year-old right-hander. The young legend from Van Meter, Iowa, was signed before he graduated from high school by the Cleveland Indians, the team for which he pitched for the next 20 years. He never played in the minor leagues and was the youngest pitcher ever to start, complete, and win a major league game.
Feller led the American League in strikeouts 7 times while pitching 3 no-hitters and 12 one-hitters. Feller racked up 266 wins—the most ever by a Cleveland pitcher—and undoubtedly would have won even more if he had not spent 44 months in the Navy during World War II. He led the American League in wins for three straight years before he enlisted in the military, and after his discharge he again led the league in victories in his first two full seasons of pitching. Rapid Robert Feller was elected to baseball's Hall of Fame in 1962, his first year of eligibility.
—Earl Weaver
Perhaps the hardest-throwing pitcher in baseball history, Bob Feller was one of the game's greatest strikeout kings. He exploded onto the major league scene in 1936 as a fireballing 17-year-old right-hander. The young legend from Van Meter, Iowa, was signed before he graduated from high school by the Cleveland Indians, the team for which he pitched for the next 20 years. He never played in the minor leagues and was the youngest pitcher ever to start, complete, and win a major league game.
Feller led the American League in strikeouts 7 times while pitching 3 no-hitters and 12 one-hitters. Feller racked up 266 wins—the most ever by a Cleveland pitcher—and undoubtedly would have won even more if he had not spent 44 months in the Navy during World War II. He led the American League in wins for three straight years before he enlisted in the military, and after his discharge he again led the league in victories in his first two full seasons of pitching. Rapid Robert Feller was elected to baseball's Hall of Fame in 1962, his first year of eligibility.
64 pages, Library Binding
First published January 1, 1990
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October 17, 2015
There are a few moundsmen in Major League Baseball history I feel confident saying were greater than Bob Feller. Walter Johnson. Christy Mathewson. Possibly Sandy Koufax, whose longevity, like Feller's, was affected by injury. Cy Young, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Lefty Grove, Warren Spahn, or Greg Maddux could be argued as a little better than Bob Feller over the course of their long careers, though I don't see how their superiority could be asserted definitively. But give me one start by Rapid Robert Feller at the zenith of his career, either in the years right before he joined the American Navy for World War II or the years right after he came back, when his meteoric fastball was at peak velocity, and I like his chances to beat any pitcher in history. You can name any legend of the mound you like—Al Spalding, Hoss Radbourn, Addie Joss, Walter Johnson, Smoky Joe Wood, Rube Waddell, Dizzy Dean, Satchel Paige, Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Clayton Kershaw, anyone—and Bob Feller in his heyday could have beaten him head-to-head. His turbocharged fastball, devastating curve, and the situational savvy and control he developed in the latter stages of his career made him a daunting enemy for any hitter of his era. In the discussion of greatest pitchers in MLB history, Bob Feller's name must be part of any valid debate. The Cleveland Indians, the American League, and the sport of baseball have never seen another like him.
Bob Feller came to the majors as green as can be, a seventeen-year-old midwesterner still attending high school. But the Cleveland Indians' brass had made no mistake in signing this kid, as he set out to demonstrate from his first exhibition appearance, against the famed "Gashouse Gang" St. Louis Cardinals. Seasoned baseball veterans had never seen an arm as live as his, at least not since the early days of the Big Train, Walter Johnson. Bob Feller commenced piling up strikeouts, one-hitters, and wins at a torrid pace, establishing himself as one of the finest hurlers in the game by age twenty. As Feller's physique matured and his stamina grew, his workload increased exponentially, but rarely were the hundreds of innings the team expected him to pitch each season a problem for the young ace. By December 1941, when Feller answered the call to enlist with the Navy to battle the Axis Powers in the Pacific, he was indisputably the best pitcher in the big leagues. Sadly, the war would take him away from the game he loved for the next forty-four months right in the prime of his career, a portion of missed time that prevented him from ultimately reaching some of the most hallowed milestones in Major League history, particularly three hundred career wins. A moundsman of Bob Feller's caliber probably would have won three hundred games easily with only two extra seasons of play while at his best, but Feller's willingness to sacrifice statistics for the good of his country proved he was a man of admirable character as well as a world-class athlete. Like Warren Spahn, Ted Williams, and other baseball greats who served in World War II when needed, Bob Feller endures as an example of selfless patriotism.
The war may have been a serious hitch in Bob Feller's Hall of Fame career, but the three-and-a-half-year hiatus didn't end his days as baseball's top dog. Rejoining the Indians in August 1945 to a frenzy of excitement in Cleveland and nationwide, Feller was back in elite form almost immediately, dominating the American League the next several seasons as if he'd never left. He might have proceeded to pitch with the same success deep into his thirties or even early forties if not for a freak knee injury suffered on the field in 1947, when he was only twenty-eight. Bob Feller's knee and pitching arm were both damaged, and his nuclear fastball was never quite the same again. As the speed on his go-to pitch dropped, so did his ability to totally overwhelm the best hitters in the game, and they dug in at the plate more comfortably, able to track his pitches and connect for hits with improved consistency. This could have been the beginning of a sharp drop-off in productivity for Feller, and for a while in the late '40s it was, as he struggled to understand the pitcher he now was due to the limitations on his once magnificent arm. But Feller was a smart player, more than just the unhittable fastball he'd been blessed with from an early age, and he figured out how to use his brain as well as his gifted right arm to get batters out and continue racking up strikeouts, innings pitched, and wins. In 1948, the Cleveland Indians won the American League pennant for the first time in twenty-eight seasons (with Feller contributing nineteen wins, including a crucial 6-0 September), and went on to take the World Series championship despite limited production in the series from the pitcher who had once been their biggest star. Feller had a few banner years after that, most notably his sparkling 22-8 campaign in 1951, but once the mid-'50s rolled around he had become a remnant of an earlier age of baseball greatness, a legend whose time to bow out was nearly upon him. New manager Al Lopez used Feller as a starter less and less in his waning years, and Feller retired after the 1956 season. His career numbers were astounding: two hundred sixty-six wins, a 3.25 Earned Run Average in what could be deemed a hitter's era, two hundred seventy-nine complete games, forty-six shutouts, and 2,581 strikeouts.
Revered by cognoscenti of historical baseball in perpetuity since throwing his final pitch, Bob Feller is a titan among titans, one of the most gifted and productive players baseball has ever seen. The casual fan has never heard Feller's name, but those acquainted with the rich history of the game are well familiar with the unprecedented ability Bob Feller brought to his position and the way he captivated fans throughout America while pitching across three decades of its Favorite Pastime. Feller was the biggest drawing card in Major League Baseball for much of the 1940s, and he deserves to be remembered by fans of every generation who desire to appreciate the greatness of yesterday as well as the present. For a seventeen-year-old out of Van Meter, Iowa, his eighteen big-league seasons in the sun must have gone by so quickly, over and done sooner than he could have imagined. I look at photos of teenage Bob Feller, a prodigy undoubtedly feeling like he'd be young and in this moment virtually forever, and in the blink of an eye twenty years are water under the bridge and the youngster formerly known as Rapid Robert is thirty-eight and his talents are a mere shadow of what they once were. Blink again and he's seventy-two, his age in 1990 when this book was first published, and another blink takes him to ninety-two, as he was in 2010 when he passed away, a bedrock member of Baseball's Hall of Fame since his election almost fifty years before. The sweetest years of life pass us by so fast, and they just aren't enough regardless of how deeply we try to enjoy them. But in the pages of this book, Bob Feller is a vibrant, youthful baseball phenom once more, if only for the time it takes to read it, and yesterday meets today in wondrous homage to an athlete who lived the dream of excelling at the sport he loved. Indefatigable hard work and determination to make it to the big leagues brought Bob Feller a life of competitive fulfillment I'm sure he wouldn't have changed for all the money in the world.
God bless the Baseball Legends series for bringing to the attention of young readers greats of the diamond who might be forgotten were it not for writers eager to research and retell their stories. Jimmie Foxx, Dizzy Dean, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider, and dozens of others are written about in this series, and without Baseball Legends I don't know if kids who love the game would know who these Hall of Famers were. The brevity of the books means sacrificing some biographical depth, which is why I'm not rating Bob Feller higher than a solid two and a half stars, but I loved spending time in Feller's life story. As I write this review during the 2015 MLB postseason, one can still construct a strong anecdotal and numbers-driven case for Bob Feller as a top-five pitcher in Major League history, and that's a ridiculously difficult five-man rotation to crack. Passionate fans of baseball will have a good time with this book, and I highly recommend it. To the author, I say: Way to go, Morris Eckhouse. Way to go.
Bob Feller came to the majors as green as can be, a seventeen-year-old midwesterner still attending high school. But the Cleveland Indians' brass had made no mistake in signing this kid, as he set out to demonstrate from his first exhibition appearance, against the famed "Gashouse Gang" St. Louis Cardinals. Seasoned baseball veterans had never seen an arm as live as his, at least not since the early days of the Big Train, Walter Johnson. Bob Feller commenced piling up strikeouts, one-hitters, and wins at a torrid pace, establishing himself as one of the finest hurlers in the game by age twenty. As Feller's physique matured and his stamina grew, his workload increased exponentially, but rarely were the hundreds of innings the team expected him to pitch each season a problem for the young ace. By December 1941, when Feller answered the call to enlist with the Navy to battle the Axis Powers in the Pacific, he was indisputably the best pitcher in the big leagues. Sadly, the war would take him away from the game he loved for the next forty-four months right in the prime of his career, a portion of missed time that prevented him from ultimately reaching some of the most hallowed milestones in Major League history, particularly three hundred career wins. A moundsman of Bob Feller's caliber probably would have won three hundred games easily with only two extra seasons of play while at his best, but Feller's willingness to sacrifice statistics for the good of his country proved he was a man of admirable character as well as a world-class athlete. Like Warren Spahn, Ted Williams, and other baseball greats who served in World War II when needed, Bob Feller endures as an example of selfless patriotism.
The war may have been a serious hitch in Bob Feller's Hall of Fame career, but the three-and-a-half-year hiatus didn't end his days as baseball's top dog. Rejoining the Indians in August 1945 to a frenzy of excitement in Cleveland and nationwide, Feller was back in elite form almost immediately, dominating the American League the next several seasons as if he'd never left. He might have proceeded to pitch with the same success deep into his thirties or even early forties if not for a freak knee injury suffered on the field in 1947, when he was only twenty-eight. Bob Feller's knee and pitching arm were both damaged, and his nuclear fastball was never quite the same again. As the speed on his go-to pitch dropped, so did his ability to totally overwhelm the best hitters in the game, and they dug in at the plate more comfortably, able to track his pitches and connect for hits with improved consistency. This could have been the beginning of a sharp drop-off in productivity for Feller, and for a while in the late '40s it was, as he struggled to understand the pitcher he now was due to the limitations on his once magnificent arm. But Feller was a smart player, more than just the unhittable fastball he'd been blessed with from an early age, and he figured out how to use his brain as well as his gifted right arm to get batters out and continue racking up strikeouts, innings pitched, and wins. In 1948, the Cleveland Indians won the American League pennant for the first time in twenty-eight seasons (with Feller contributing nineteen wins, including a crucial 6-0 September), and went on to take the World Series championship despite limited production in the series from the pitcher who had once been their biggest star. Feller had a few banner years after that, most notably his sparkling 22-8 campaign in 1951, but once the mid-'50s rolled around he had become a remnant of an earlier age of baseball greatness, a legend whose time to bow out was nearly upon him. New manager Al Lopez used Feller as a starter less and less in his waning years, and Feller retired after the 1956 season. His career numbers were astounding: two hundred sixty-six wins, a 3.25 Earned Run Average in what could be deemed a hitter's era, two hundred seventy-nine complete games, forty-six shutouts, and 2,581 strikeouts.
Revered by cognoscenti of historical baseball in perpetuity since throwing his final pitch, Bob Feller is a titan among titans, one of the most gifted and productive players baseball has ever seen. The casual fan has never heard Feller's name, but those acquainted with the rich history of the game are well familiar with the unprecedented ability Bob Feller brought to his position and the way he captivated fans throughout America while pitching across three decades of its Favorite Pastime. Feller was the biggest drawing card in Major League Baseball for much of the 1940s, and he deserves to be remembered by fans of every generation who desire to appreciate the greatness of yesterday as well as the present. For a seventeen-year-old out of Van Meter, Iowa, his eighteen big-league seasons in the sun must have gone by so quickly, over and done sooner than he could have imagined. I look at photos of teenage Bob Feller, a prodigy undoubtedly feeling like he'd be young and in this moment virtually forever, and in the blink of an eye twenty years are water under the bridge and the youngster formerly known as Rapid Robert is thirty-eight and his talents are a mere shadow of what they once were. Blink again and he's seventy-two, his age in 1990 when this book was first published, and another blink takes him to ninety-two, as he was in 2010 when he passed away, a bedrock member of Baseball's Hall of Fame since his election almost fifty years before. The sweetest years of life pass us by so fast, and they just aren't enough regardless of how deeply we try to enjoy them. But in the pages of this book, Bob Feller is a vibrant, youthful baseball phenom once more, if only for the time it takes to read it, and yesterday meets today in wondrous homage to an athlete who lived the dream of excelling at the sport he loved. Indefatigable hard work and determination to make it to the big leagues brought Bob Feller a life of competitive fulfillment I'm sure he wouldn't have changed for all the money in the world.
God bless the Baseball Legends series for bringing to the attention of young readers greats of the diamond who might be forgotten were it not for writers eager to research and retell their stories. Jimmie Foxx, Dizzy Dean, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider, and dozens of others are written about in this series, and without Baseball Legends I don't know if kids who love the game would know who these Hall of Famers were. The brevity of the books means sacrificing some biographical depth, which is why I'm not rating Bob Feller higher than a solid two and a half stars, but I loved spending time in Feller's life story. As I write this review during the 2015 MLB postseason, one can still construct a strong anecdotal and numbers-driven case for Bob Feller as a top-five pitcher in Major League history, and that's a ridiculously difficult five-man rotation to crack. Passionate fans of baseball will have a good time with this book, and I highly recommend it. To the author, I say: Way to go, Morris Eckhouse. Way to go.
Displaying 1 of 1 review