CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Greatest Indian of Them All, Bob Feller, grew up in Van Meter on the Iowa prairie, among legends both real and make-believe.
Winterset, Iowa, was the hometown of John Wayne, although his name was Marion Morrison then. Nile Kinnick, who won the Heisman Trophy at the University of Iowa, was Feller's catcher in American Legion ball and grew up in Adel, Iowa. A sportscaster called "Dutch" Reagan was working in DesMoines.
Feller's life was a tale as tall as any of theirs.
Ted Williams, the consensus choice as baseball's all-time greatest hitter, closely studied pitchers, but he never obsessed about them -- except for one.
Feller captivated Williams. While Williams would focus on someone like Allie Reynolds of the Yankees, a terrific pitcher, for two hours before a game, he started psyching up three days before facing Feller. The difference between Feller's stuff and "good" stuff was always exponential.
Feller had a "field of dreams," in Iowa, just like in the movie. After clearing the land with his own hands, his father planted more wheat than corn on the rest of the farm. Wheat was easier to harvest, which left more time for baseball.
That's a synthesis of fathers, sons, baseball, and amber waves of grain. Feller, who passed away Wednesday at age 92 of complications from leukemia, was born, bred and whole grain-fed to be an American icon.
To protect his amateur eligibility, he signed with the Indians for $1 and a baseball autographed by the members of the team. Feller struck out 17 Philadelphia A's, breaking the American League record, when he was only 17 years old. Then, he went home to finish high school. He would have been a global sensation in today's world of 24/7 news cycles on cable TV and the Internet. It is not overstating it to say that Feller might have been the greatest prodigy in any field since Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
He was self-assured enough to throw a strike, at nearly 79 years of age -- and from the pitching rubber yet -- while making the ceremonial first pitch during the 1997 World Series.
Blunt and outspoken, he was also one of the most admirable men of an admirable generation. In the prime of his career, he gave up 31/2 years to serve in the Navy. He enlisted two days after Pearl Harbor, although he could have gotten a deferment since he was the sole support of his family, and his father was dying. In contrast to how teams schemed to arrange reserve-unit berths for players during the Vietnam war, Feller told told Cy Slapnicka, the scout who had signed him: "I'm going to enlist."
Slapnicka replied: "I think you should." As chief of an anti-aircraft battery on the battleship USS Alabama, Feller steamed 175,000 miles, crossed the Arctic Circle six times and the Equator 24 times, won eight battle stars, and, for his pains, saw a bunch of know-littles exclude him from the list of the 20th century's greatest players because he didn't win 300 games. Why, without World War II, he'd have won close to 400!
Although he played catch on the Alabama every day, Feller could not have known that he would come back to the big leagues as good as ever, not after missing most of four seasons when he was his early to mid-20s. In a way, it figured. .Legends are for all time, literally.
Before the color barrier fell after World War II in big-league baseball, Feller barnstormed in the off-season against the best of his era, including the great Negro League stars. He was an equal-opportunity strikeout artist.
He said only Walter "Big Train" Johnson was faster than he was. That riled Nolan Ryan's fans, but Feller had a strong sense of what it meant to be "Rapid Robert." Still, his self-gratification was slight, compared to his self-sacrifice. "Freedom's not free," he said.
On 9/11, one of the darkest days since Pearl Harbor, a reporter seeking reaction from a player who was a veteran of military service called Feller. It was an easy choice. He was the greatest American I ever knew.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Baseball in Cleveland will never be the same without Bob Feller: Paul Hoynes commentary
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Hi Corbett Field was nearly empty on a long ago spring morning.
Bob Feller was the only occupant on the Indians' spring training grounds. He was in right field, in full uniform, going through his pitching delivery. He'd come to a set position, whirl and throw the ball into the right field wall.
Feller was practicing his pickoff move to second. Why not? He was only in his 70s.
Bob Feller, the greatest Indian of them all, is gone. He died Wednesday night and baseball in Cleveland will never be the same.
The birth of the new season didn't mean a thing until Feller walked into the spring-training press room, cracking jokes and passing out a new set of his autographed baseball cards to anyone within arm's reach. It didn't matter if it was Tucson, Ariz., Winter Haven, Fla., or Goodyear, Ariz., the sun couldn't shine and Indians players couldn't start pulling their hamstrings until No.19 reported.
He was sharp of mind, a red state unto himself and had an opinion on everything. He moved easily among the rich and famous. He danced with Marilyn Monroe, pitched to Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, mingled with admirals and generals. Everyone knew Rapid Robert, the Heater from Van Meter.
In Winter Haven one morning, reporters were talking about what Indians players might open the season on the disabled list. The war in Iraq was raging on and Feller quickly tied the two together.
"I was just in Washington, D.C., talking to some generals," Feller said. "I'll tell you who's going on the disabled list ... Saddam Hussein."
Feller won 266 games with the Indians, throwing three no-hitters and 12 one-hitters. At his peak, he joined the U.S. Navy right after Pearl Harbor in 1941 and lost nearly 3 1/2 years of his career in World War II.
Feller told me it probably cost him about 60 victories, but he had no regrets about going to war.
"We were getting the hell kicked out of us," he said. "I thought we needed some help."
My favorite memory of Feller was listening to him talk about the barnstorming tour he organized with Satchel Paige and other Negro League stars. It was a blue-sky day at Chain of Lakes Park in Winter Haven as Feller talked to a group or reporters, but he made it sound as if the tour between big-league stars and Negro League greats happened yesterday.
Feller organized the tour, booked the hotels and travel. I don't know if he sold tickets, but he may have. He and Paige pitched two to three innings every day of the tour. He remembered dates, towns and crowd sizes.
He ranked Paige as one of the top 20 pitchers of all time. He gave scouting reports on other Negro League players, turning the mist of legend into muscle and flesh. It was an oral history of baseball and I'm still kicking myself for not taping it.
In last season's World Series between San Francisco and Texas, the Giants had Hall of Famers Juan Marichal, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda and Gaylord Perry throw out the first pitch from Game 1. Willie Mays would have been there, but he wasn't feeling well.
In Cleveland, the Indians only had Feller at that pristine level of baseball greatness. The good thing was he was he never left.
• Playing catch in front of the Indians' dugout with Omar Vizquel in Winter Haven just before game time as the PA announcer reeled off his statistics that the crowd knew by heart.
• Sitting in the press box for the opening of Jacobs Field in 1994 as Seattle's Randy Johnson threatened, but eventually failed to match his record for throwing the only opening day no-hitter in history.
• Telling you his itinerary for his next round of card shows, "I'm in Dubuque on Tuesday, Nashville on Friday, Chicago on Sunday. Then I'm going to Iowa and we're going to walk out of a corn field just like in the movie."
He made his living by being Bob Feller. Herb Score used to call him "Inc." He was Bob Feller, Incorporated.
Several years ago he was asked how much he would be worth at free agent prices. He said without hesitation $15 million to $17 million a year. It was clear he'd thought about it. Today he'd be short-changing himself.
I wonder what Feller would have done if he pitched in the free-agent era? Would he have played his whole career in Cleveland? His talent certainly made him a one-team player such as Cal Ripken Jr. or Tony Gwynn. Or would he have left for more money and better opportunities like so many others?
Such thoughts are not for the moment. Today is for being grateful that we had Bob Feller among us for so long. That he was always there and in no hurry to leave.
Most underrated RH starter: Bob Feller
Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from "The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players in Baseball History" by Jayson Stark. Copyright (c) 2007 by the author. This excerpt has been printed with the permission of Triumph Books. For information on how to purchase the book, click here.
I'm still convinced that Bob Feller is the most underrated righthander who ever lived. But only because he is.
Imagine this kid, at 17 years old, pitching an exhibition game in 1936 against a Cardinals team still rolling out most of the lineup that had won the World Series in 1934 -- and striking out EIGHT of the nine hitters he faced. Imagine this kid, a few weeks later, making the first start of his big-league career, and whiffing 15 St. Louis Browns. Imagine him, three weeks after that, ripping off 17 K's against the Athletics -- the biggest strikeout game in American League history at the time. Now imagine him, just a couple of weeks later, heading back home to Iowa -- so he could ride the SCHOOL BUS with his sister and finish high school. All true. It all happened. In real life. He was the LeBron James of his era -- except with a 12-to-6 curve instead of a learning curve.
How many American teenagers have had the impact on their country that Bob Feller once did? His high school graduation was broadcast live -- to the whole U.S.A. (on NBC radio). His face was on the COVER of Time Magazine before he'd even started 10 big-league games. So it's pretty clear Bob Feller wasn't overrated back then.
But that was then. This is now, all these decades later. And Feller no longer gets his due. When ESPN asked its in-house stable of baseball "experts" (full disclosure: myself included) to rank baseball's greatest living pitchers in May of 2006, Feller finished sixth. But in an accompanying ESPN Sports Nation poll of ESPN.com surfers, Feller didn't even make the top 10. (The only other Sports Nation omission from the experts' top 10: Juan Marichal.) Seven years earlier, in the fan voting for the All-Century team, Feller wasn't even close, finishing 13th (with nearly 740,000 fewer votes than Ryan).
So what's up with that?
We'd better remind you -- assuming you ever knew -- just how enormous a figure Feller was in his time. Over the first 95 seasons in the existence of Major League Baseball, only one pitcher cranked out four straight seasons of 240 strikeouts or more -- Bob Feller. In that same period, he and Walter Johnson were the only pitchers who ever led their league in strikeouts 10 or more seasons apart. Through the first nine seasons of Feller's career, he was the most unhittable pitcher in history (allowing just 7.01 hits per 9 innings). And the real proof was all those games in which nobody -- or just about nobody -- got a hit. This man threw three no-hitters and TWELVE one-hitters. Until Nolan Ryan came along, the only pitcher in the 20th century with even half as many combined no-hitters and one-hitters was Walter Johnson (one no-hitter, seven one-hitters). And Feller was the only 20th-century pitcher with three no-hitters until Sandy Koufax showed up.
Feller also just might be (ahem) The Hardest Thrower Who Ever Lived. We'll never know for sure, of course. In his day, there were no radar guns attached to every scoreboard in America -- possibly because radar had only been invented about 20 minutes earlier. But there's one expert who KNOWS (totally for sure) that Feller was The Hardest Thrower Who Ever Lived. And that would be the ever-modest Feller himself.
I'll never forget, back in the 1997 Indians-Marlins World Series, the radar board in Florida threw a "102 mph" up there after one fateful fastball by Marlins closer Robb Nen. Yep, 102. Never saw one of THOSE before. Before the game the next day, the New York Post's Tom Keegan and I spotted Feller on the field. So we decided to ask for ourselves whether he thought he'd ever thrown a pitch that traveled 102 miles an hour. "Hell," he said, "that was my CHANGE-UP."
Feller then proceeded to tell a story about some gizmo, or military invention, called the Electric Cell Device. This was some kind of chamber -- no longer available at a Wal Mart near you -- that was used back in 1946 to clock his fastball. Feller claimed he whooshed a pitch through the old ECD that was measured at 107.9 miles per hour. Must have been that point-9 that made him so hard to hit.
Virtually from the minute he threw his first pitch, there was so much national fascination with Feller and his heater that folks were constantly looking for ways to figure out whether his 100-mph flameball was reality or myth. So in 1940, Feller was lined up for his most legendary pitcher's duel -- with a speeding motorcycle. Just as the motorcycle varoomed by him at 86 mph, Feller launched his fastball at a target 60 feet, 6 inches away. The baseball won that race so easily, it was calculated that his Harley-ball was traveling at 104 mph. Oh by the way, a small hole had been cut out of the target so a camera could record this fabled pitch -- and Feller launched his fastball right through the target, wiping out the camera. So don't try to buy that historic photo on eBay any time soon.
Now no doubt you Nolan Ryan fans out there are saying: "What's the big whoop?" There are all kinds of stories about Ryan -- who was elected (by me) as the most overrated righthanded starter of all time in this book -- that sound just like these, right? Well, there is one significant difference between Ryan and Feller: Feller consistently found ways to convert his smokeball and all his whiffs into wins.
Feller had seven seasons of at least 15 wins and a .
Feller got through war, then got hurt
At the conclusion of the 1941 season, Bob Feller was 22 years old and he'd won 107 games in the major leagues. At that pace ... well, if Feller had continued pitching that well until he was 42, he would have challenged Cy Young's more impressive records.
A war got in the way.
The way Feller told the story, on the 7th of December he was driving his new Buick from his home in Iowa to Chicago, for a meeting with Cy Slapnicka, Cleveland's general manager, and manager Roger Peckinpaugh. Feller expected to sign a new contract for 1942.
Car radios were still uncommon in 1941, and expensive. But when you win 107 games before your 23rd birthday, you can afford the radio and a tinny-sounding speaker. Crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois, Feller heard the bulletin: Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor.
"I knew that the purpose of our meeting had just changed," Feller would write, nearly 50 years later. He would tell Slapnicka and Peckinpaugh that instead of signing a new contract, he would be signing enlistment papers for the U.S. Navy. Immediately.
He could have waited to be drafted, and almost certainly would have been able to continue playing baseball through 1942, at least; with his father terminally ill, Feller was his family's sole financial support. Some players weren't drafted until after the 1943 season. But Feller went right in, voluntarily. A few months into his enlistment, tired of a cushy stateside posting, he pressed for combat duty and spent much of 1943 and '44 commanding a gunnery crew on a battleship, the U.S.S. Alabama.
By the time Feller returned to baseball in 1945, he'd missed more than three-and-a-half seasons. Among the first stars to come back, Feller would be a sort of guinea pig, as nobody knew what such a long layoff would mean for professional baseball players (many of whom would miss two or three full seasons).
In the event, most (though not all) of them picked up right where they'd left off.*
* Most of the stars, anyway. Many dozens of lesser players lost their prime seasons because of the war -- not to mention all the younger men who lost their lives or their health -- and never played in the majors, or even professional baseball, at all.
Of course, eventually another question would come up. From Feller's 1990 autobiography, "Now Pitching: Bob Feller":
Then people began to wonder how we would have done if the war hadn't come along. Baseball fans filled many an hour in those days with that "what-if" question. Eventually, an analyst in Seattle, Ralph Winnie, sat down at his computer and figured out the answers.
He took our individual stats for the last three years before our military services and our first three years after the war, then averaged them out on a per-season basis and projected them across the war years...
In my case, Winnie projected that I would have 107 more games, finishing with 373 career wins instead of 266, with another 1,070 strikeouts, five no-hitters instead of three and 19 one-hitters instead of 12. He calculated that I would have finished with the sixth most wins in history instead of 28th and the seventh most shutouts instead of 29th.
In his book, Feller tempered those numbers a bit, writing, "It may not prove anything ... We could have been injured and missed a full season or slipped on a banana peel, who knows?"
In the years after Feller's book was published, he became more outspoken in his political views -- somewhat famously in these parts, during an ESPN.com chat he went off on "Hanoi Jane" Fonda -- and more willing to take credit for the statistics that might have been his, absent the war.
Realistically, I think such exercises are more instructive for hitters than pitchers, simply because hitters don't run the same injury risk that pitchers do. Feller might have been injured if he'd kept on pitching during the war years. From his Age 19 through Age 22 seasons, Feller averaged 309 innings per season ... though whether that means he was primed for an injury or was invulnerable to fatigue, I really can't hazard a guess.
Upon Feller's discharge from the Navy in August 1945, he returned to the Indians and pitched well in nine late-season starts. In 1946, he enjoyed one of his best seasons, leading the American League in wins (26), games pitched (48), games started (42), complete games (36), shutouts (10), innings (371) and strikeouts (348).
Feller got off to a fine start in 1947, but hurt his knee in June and was never really the same. From that point through the end of his career, nine mostly humdrum years later, he struck out just slightly more than four batters per nine innings.
People wonder how Bob Feller would have done if the war hadn't come along. I wonder how Bob Feller would have done if he hadn't lost his All-World fastball before he turned 29 - Rob Neyer
A war got in the way.
The way Feller told the story, on the 7th of December he was driving his new Buick from his home in Iowa to Chicago, for a meeting with Cy Slapnicka, Cleveland's general manager, and manager Roger Peckinpaugh. Feller expected to sign a new contract for 1942.
Car radios were still uncommon in 1941, and expensive. But when you win 107 games before your 23rd birthday, you can afford the radio and a tinny-sounding speaker. Crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois, Feller heard the bulletin: Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor.
"I knew that the purpose of our meeting had just changed," Feller would write, nearly 50 years later. He would tell Slapnicka and Peckinpaugh that instead of signing a new contract, he would be signing enlistment papers for the U.S. Navy. Immediately.
He could have waited to be drafted, and almost certainly would have been able to continue playing baseball through 1942, at least; with his father terminally ill, Feller was his family's sole financial support. Some players weren't drafted until after the 1943 season. But Feller went right in, voluntarily. A few months into his enlistment, tired of a cushy stateside posting, he pressed for combat duty and spent much of 1943 and '44 commanding a gunnery crew on a battleship, the U.S.S. Alabama.
By the time Feller returned to baseball in 1945, he'd missed more than three-and-a-half seasons. Among the first stars to come back, Feller would be a sort of guinea pig, as nobody knew what such a long layoff would mean for professional baseball players (many of whom would miss two or three full seasons).
In the event, most (though not all) of them picked up right where they'd left off.*
* Most of the stars, anyway. Many dozens of lesser players lost their prime seasons because of the war -- not to mention all the younger men who lost their lives or their health -- and never played in the majors, or even professional baseball, at all.
Of course, eventually another question would come up. From Feller's 1990 autobiography, "Now Pitching: Bob Feller":
Then people began to wonder how we would have done if the war hadn't come along. Baseball fans filled many an hour in those days with that "what-if" question. Eventually, an analyst in Seattle, Ralph Winnie, sat down at his computer and figured out the answers.
He took our individual stats for the last three years before our military services and our first three years after the war, then averaged them out on a per-season basis and projected them across the war years...
In my case, Winnie projected that I would have 107 more games, finishing with 373 career wins instead of 266, with another 1,070 strikeouts, five no-hitters instead of three and 19 one-hitters instead of 12. He calculated that I would have finished with the sixth most wins in history instead of 28th and the seventh most shutouts instead of 29th.
In his book, Feller tempered those numbers a bit, writing, "It may not prove anything ... We could have been injured and missed a full season or slipped on a banana peel, who knows?"
In the years after Feller's book was published, he became more outspoken in his political views -- somewhat famously in these parts, during an ESPN.com chat he went off on "Hanoi Jane" Fonda -- and more willing to take credit for the statistics that might have been his, absent the war.
Realistically, I think such exercises are more instructive for hitters than pitchers, simply because hitters don't run the same injury risk that pitchers do. Feller might have been injured if he'd kept on pitching during the war years. From his Age 19 through Age 22 seasons, Feller averaged 309 innings per season ... though whether that means he was primed for an injury or was invulnerable to fatigue, I really can't hazard a guess.
Upon Feller's discharge from the Navy in August 1945, he returned to the Indians and pitched well in nine late-season starts. In 1946, he enjoyed one of his best seasons, leading the American League in wins (26), games pitched (48), games started (42), complete games (36), shutouts (10), innings (371) and strikeouts (348).
Feller got off to a fine start in 1947, but hurt his knee in June and was never really the same. From that point through the end of his career, nine mostly humdrum years later, he struck out just slightly more than four batters per nine innings.
People wonder how Bob Feller would have done if the war hadn't come along. I wonder how Bob Feller would have done if he hadn't lost his All-World fastball before he turned 29 - Rob Neyer
In his 92 years, Feller saw it all
In his 92 years, Feller saw it all
December, 15, 2010 Dec 1511:30PM ETEmail Print Comments8 By Rob Neyer
I'm sorry to hear about Bob Feller's passing, if not surprised. Most of us have been around long enough what it means when a 92-year-old man is transferred to hospice care. At that point, one can only hope for a peaceful end and perhaps a few more good moments with loved ones.
Bob Feller actually lasted a bit longer than some thought. Almost a week ago, the Northern Ohio Journal actually reported Feller's death, and columnist Jim Ingraham wrote a lovely tribute. That was yanked from the Journal's website a few hours later, but I think this passage is a fine introduction:
Bob Feller won his first 100 games before the age of 23. He died Wednesday at the age of 92.At either end of his life he mocked convention. He made his major league debut -- this is beyond outrageous -- at 17. In his first major league start he set a major league record for strikeouts in a game, and then after that season went back to high school for his senior year. Think about that.
He lived to be 92. How many 92-year-olds do you know?
The year he was born, Alexander Graham Bell was still alive. So were Wyatt Earp and Orville Wright.
When Feller debuted in Van Meter, Iowa, Christy Mathewson was still alive. So were Honus Wagner, Napoleon Lajoie, and Cy Young.
Ty Cobb? Not only was he still alive, he was STILL PLAYING!
As a 17-year-old rookie with the Indians in 1936, Feller needed a place to live. Cy Slapnicka, the scout who signed him, found a room for him in a boarding house in Cleveland. One of Feller’s fellow-boarders in the house had fought in the war -- the Civil War.
As amazing all of those things are, the one thing that always sticks in my head is this: Bob Feller pitched against Lou Gehrig. All the other big stars in the American League in the late 1930s, too. Joe DiMaggio. Jimmie Foxx. Hank Greenberg. Ted Williams.
Of course they're all gone, now. Nearly all of them, anyhow. Hall of Famer Bobby Doerr was actually born a few months before Feller, and debuted in the majors roughly a year after Feller. Hall of Famer Monte Irvin was born just a few months after Feller, though thanks to baseball's segregation he wouldn't reach the (previously all-white) major leagues until he was 30.
Even with Feller's passing, they're still around. It just gets a little harder to find them, all the time.
Almost to the end, though, it was rarely hard to find Bob Feller. Just a few years ago, I saw him give a rousing talk at the SABR Convention in Cleveland. Last summer he was still regularly showing up at the ballpark, one of the few men on earth who had seen Babe Ruth hit, and pitched to Lou Gehrig. And he was still crusty, unimpressed by young players who haven't won a lot of games or enlisted in the Navy during a war or been elected to the Hall of Fame.
Too crusty, maybe, by just a little. Upon seeing Stephen Strasburg in the flesh, Feller said, "Call me when he wins his first 100."
Granted, I've probably said something similar a few times. But when Bob Feller said it, people actually paid attention. He wasn't nasty (well, not often). He was opinionated, and the older he got the more willing he was to express his opinions.
Of course, he won his first 100 games before he turned 23, and did enlist to fight in a war, and was elected to the Hall of Fame. If anyone ever earned the right to the occasional bout of crustiness, it was probably Rapid Robert Feller
http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/6557/in-his-92-years-feller-saw-it-all
December, 15, 2010 Dec 1511:30PM ETEmail Print Comments8 By Rob Neyer
I'm sorry to hear about Bob Feller's passing, if not surprised. Most of us have been around long enough what it means when a 92-year-old man is transferred to hospice care. At that point, one can only hope for a peaceful end and perhaps a few more good moments with loved ones.
Bob Feller actually lasted a bit longer than some thought. Almost a week ago, the Northern Ohio Journal actually reported Feller's death, and columnist Jim Ingraham wrote a lovely tribute. That was yanked from the Journal's website a few hours later, but I think this passage is a fine introduction:
Bob Feller won his first 100 games before the age of 23. He died Wednesday at the age of 92.At either end of his life he mocked convention. He made his major league debut -- this is beyond outrageous -- at 17. In his first major league start he set a major league record for strikeouts in a game, and then after that season went back to high school for his senior year. Think about that.
He lived to be 92. How many 92-year-olds do you know?
The year he was born, Alexander Graham Bell was still alive. So were Wyatt Earp and Orville Wright.
When Feller debuted in Van Meter, Iowa, Christy Mathewson was still alive. So were Honus Wagner, Napoleon Lajoie, and Cy Young.
Ty Cobb? Not only was he still alive, he was STILL PLAYING!
As a 17-year-old rookie with the Indians in 1936, Feller needed a place to live. Cy Slapnicka, the scout who signed him, found a room for him in a boarding house in Cleveland. One of Feller’s fellow-boarders in the house had fought in the war -- the Civil War.
As amazing all of those things are, the one thing that always sticks in my head is this: Bob Feller pitched against Lou Gehrig. All the other big stars in the American League in the late 1930s, too. Joe DiMaggio. Jimmie Foxx. Hank Greenberg. Ted Williams.
Of course they're all gone, now. Nearly all of them, anyhow. Hall of Famer Bobby Doerr was actually born a few months before Feller, and debuted in the majors roughly a year after Feller. Hall of Famer Monte Irvin was born just a few months after Feller, though thanks to baseball's segregation he wouldn't reach the (previously all-white) major leagues until he was 30.
Even with Feller's passing, they're still around. It just gets a little harder to find them, all the time.
Almost to the end, though, it was rarely hard to find Bob Feller. Just a few years ago, I saw him give a rousing talk at the SABR Convention in Cleveland. Last summer he was still regularly showing up at the ballpark, one of the few men on earth who had seen Babe Ruth hit, and pitched to Lou Gehrig. And he was still crusty, unimpressed by young players who haven't won a lot of games or enlisted in the Navy during a war or been elected to the Hall of Fame.
Too crusty, maybe, by just a little. Upon seeing Stephen Strasburg in the flesh, Feller said, "Call me when he wins his first 100."
Granted, I've probably said something similar a few times. But when Bob Feller said it, people actually paid attention. He wasn't nasty (well, not often). He was opinionated, and the older he got the more willing he was to express his opinions.
Of course, he won his first 100 games before he turned 23, and did enlist to fight in a war, and was elected to the Hall of Fame. If anyone ever earned the right to the occasional bout of crustiness, it was probably Rapid Robert Feller
http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/6557/in-his-92-years-feller-saw-it-all
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