September 1995

SPEAKING OF SPORTS

by Barry Stagg

SEPTEMBER 1995

Bob Feller

Bob Feller is 76 years old. He was 17 when he first threw a major league pitch in 1936. He threw hard. He was and still is the best pitcher ever to wear the uniform of the Cleveland Indians. By the time he was 23 years old he had won 107 major league games. He did not win another until he was 26. He turned 23 on November 3,1941. A month later his country was attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbour and Bob Feller became an American soldier until the war was done.

Feller is a Cleveland Indian of another time and it sometimes seems as if he comes from a time that could only have existed on another planet. This is because Bob Feller is a patriot and a proud outspoken man and he stands in such vivid contrast to the selfish neurotics who people the rosters of 1995 major league baseball.

Feller made the sports news this summer in the form of a snide and ignorant comment from an anonymous Toronto hack who took Feller up on his comment that Pete Rose of gambling infamy did not belong in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The reporter characterized this great pitcher as a bitter old man for his repugnance at having to share the Hall of Fame with the convicted and thoroughly disgraced Rose. The petty point made by the graceless typist was that Feller should give up his income from card signing shows if he truly felt repelled by the thought of sharing the elevated ground with Mr. Rose. The basis for this leap of logic apparently was the idea that the only economic attraction for a Bob Feller autograph is his ancient investiture in the Cooperstown, New York institution.

Perhaps some of the more ignorant sports reporters of this year might benefit from a review of the records that "old men " like Feller set before some of the present day misfits who call themselves major leaguers were even walking around. Baseball did not begin with the parade of overpaid ignoramuses who flit from addiction to addiction in today's million dollar parade of spoiled brats. It was a prosperous and healthy industry before Pete Rose and Barry Bonds and their teammates brought greed and vanity to heights previously scaled only by Hollywood stars.

Bob Feller was as big a pitching star as could be found in baseball in 1941.In 1939 at the age of 20 he won 24 games while striking out 246 batters. In 1940 he won 27 games and whiffed another 261 hitters. In 1941 he won 25 games and struck out 260 American League sluggers. Then at the ripe old age of 23 he went to war. Like others of his generation such as Ted Williams and Hank Greenberg and Joe DiMaggio, he put his personal career into limbo to fight for the greater good of his country and the world-wide effort to defeat the Nazi movement. Remember these were young men in their prime earning years as ballplayers. These were the best of their generation of young stars. Still they went to war.

How many of today's pampered prima donnas would go straight into the military in such a modern situation? How many would go running to their greedy agents to whine for a deferral from service or a quick classification as medically unfit? Think long and hard about each of your present day baseball heroes and decide which ones would do the honourable thing and join up. Which would turn and look for a convenient loophole to slither through while others did the fighting. We all have our opinions on who would go and who would stay. I venture to say that many of the high-paid fellows would be running for deferrals and exemptions from military service as fast as their agents could line up medical evidence to prove the indomitable hero is actually a physical wreck. Perhaps the doctors who consider O. J. Simpson a virtually disabled person could help a rich boy out.

So these are the sorry times when old athletes like Bob Feller must endure the slings and arrows of ridicule because time has brought its hazy shroud down over their achievements of 50 years ago. How excruciating it is for old athletes to sit restless and helpless in their prisons of age while the youthful play without the chance of being challenged. What would the 80 year old Joe DiMaggio give to see Barry Bonds facing Mr. Feller's 100 mile an hour fastball that thundered out of the corn fields of Iowa in 1936? How human it is to wish and wonder about such things. Time is truly our ruler and master.


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