Bob Feller
Bob Feller
Robert William Andrew Feller, nicknamed "The Heater from Van Meter", "Bullet Bob", and "Rapid Robert", was an American baseball pitcher who played 18 seasons in Major League Baseballfor the Cleveland Indians. Feller pitched from 1936 to 1941 and from 1945 to 1956, interrupted only by a four-year sojourn in the Navy. In a career spanning 570 games, Feller pitched 3,827 innings and posted a win–loss record of 266–162, with 279 complete games, 44 shutouts, and a 3.25 earned run average...
ProfessionBaseball Player
Date of Birth3 November 1918
CityVan Meter, IA
Baseball is only a game, a game of inches and a lot of luck. During a time of all-out war, sports are very insignificant.
As much as we disliked the Yankees, fans and players alike, they were good for baseball. They consistently unsuccessful teams like the Browns, Senators, and A's paid a lot of their bills with those big crowds that poured through the gates when the Yankees came to town.
Sympathy is something that shouldn't be bestowed upon the Yankees. Apparently it angers them.
I spent 34 months on the battleship Alabama, South Dakota-class. I was a gun captain. First we went to Russia for about 11 months with the British convoys. Then we were up in Norway and Scandinavia.
I went on inactive duty in August 1945, and since I had stayed in such good shape and had played ball on military teams, I was ready to start for the Indians just two days later, against the Tigers.
The difference between relief pitching when I did it today is simple, there is too much of it. It's one of those cases where more is not necessarily better.
Yankee Stadium, it's like everything else in this country. In Europe, they save all their old buildings for history. Here, we just tear them all down.
I did what any American could and should do: serve his country in its time of need.
I try to be a good human being and keep up with what's going on in the world by reading and staying in touch with the current events.
My father loved baseball and he cultivated my talent. I don't think he ever had any doubt in his mind that I would play professional baseball someday.
Nowadays, they have more trouble packing hair dryers than baseball equipment.
Those games drew a lot of people; the fans loved every minute of it.
If you ask the people in Europe who won World War II, they don't say the Allies; they say the United States won the war and saved the world.