Rapid Robert Feller

Along with Stan Musial, Bob Feller was the last of the great baseball icons from the sport’s golden age; players who lived through the great depression and saw their country fight its greatest war. Except for hometown fans, they existed only in box scores and on the radio airwaves that carried their exploits to big cities and small towns across America. During that era, when baseball was the undisputed king of sports, the players were bigger than life, and Feller was among the biggest ever.


Feller’s true story has spawned an enduring baseball cliché’, that of the “farm boy” growing up in the Midwest, playing on homemade diamonds, taught by his father to play the game right, and developing his fastball through hours of playing alone throwing against a barn or haystack. He hit the majors at 17 without a day in the minors and immediately had the best fastball in the game. When you watch the young Roy Hobbs in the Natural, this was Bob Feller.

Like Musial and Ted Williams, Feller lost many of his prime years to WWII. Feller’s lost years were probably the most damaging in terms of what might have been. He won 76 games in the 3 years leading up to the war, and 46 in the 2 years following it. Those 4 years he missed were the pure heart of his prime (age 23-26) and there is no doubt he lost 80+ wins. Despite that, he threw 3 no-hitters and 12 one-hitters, led the league in wins 6 times and strikeouts 7 times, and totaled 44 shutouts and 266 wins.

Feller’s fastball was legendary with most players agreeing it was the best in baseball since Walter Johnson. Like Johnson he mostly relied on the heater and never minded challenging any hitter in any situation. His downfall was control, very similar to the modern day Feller, Nolan Ryan. Like Ryan, Feller routinely walked well over 100 batters per year, and amazingly had games where he totaled 8 or more walks 20 times in his career.

Bob Feller was proud of his career and prickly about his standing in the game. But in listening to him over the years, he was plainly most proud of serving in the Pacific Theater in WWII for 4 years. He was a charter member of the “Greatest Generation” and never minded talking about it. It would be hard to find a more iconic representative of what we perceive as being great about America during that age. A son of the Midwest, a product of a rural upbringing, a big strapping sports hero, and a true war hero, a man who never wavered from what he stood for and what he believed. America lost one of its greats yesterday.

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