The Heater from Van Meter

The Sporting Life:

The Public Professor’s

Saturday Sports Column

I have no intention of letting this Saturday Sporting Life column descend into a running memorial service, but they’re falling like flies lately, and I cannot let the week pass with out remembering Bob Feller, who died on Wednesday at the ripe old age of 92.

Last week’s column commemorating Don Meredith was born of fond memories.  Yet as old as I feel some days, I’m still young enough to have been Bob Feller’s grandson, and of course I never saw him pitch during his eighteen year career with Cleveland. But he’s always been there, part of baseball lore, a living legend whose tales of mighty prowess preceded television and must be cobbled together from scraps of footage and tall tales.

He signed a Major League Baseball contract when he was only 16 years old.

His signing bonus was $1 and an autographed baseball.

He is estimated to have thrown a 104 mile per hour fastball.

He was such a sensation that his high school graduation was broadcast on national radio.

My first encounter with the hagiography of Bob Feller came when I was 11 years old.  I attended a Summer camp run by Joe Imperial, himself a former minor leaguer in the Pirates organization (he claimed to have known a player named Mario Cuomo), an old time New York Giants fan, and the assistant principal at my junior high school, JHS 141.  In a neighborhood dominated by Jews and the Irish, Joe Imperial was an old Italian hard ass.  Though well past his prime, everyone knew he was not to be trifled with.  Our school security guard, Mrs. Feester, knew how to carry herself, but even she would jump double Dutch with some of the girls on the sidewalk after school.  Joe Imperial?  He’d just look at you the wrong way and you knew you were done.  You didn’t want to get called into his office, you didn’t want him to yank your arm half way out of its socket for running through the hallway, and you sure weren’t ever going to see him clowning around with the kids.

Joe ran Rams Summer Camp on the side, a small gig that entailed mornings playing ball at the state park up north where he lived, and afternoons in his backyard pool.  There were only about a dozen kids all told.  I don’t quite remember how I ended up attending Rams during the Summers after 7th and 8th grades, but those were good times if you liked to play ball.  And I liked to play ball.

In mid-August, at the end of the camp season, Joe took some of us up to Cooperstown to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame. You had to pay a little extra for the trip, so not all of the kids went, but my parents sprang for it, god bless `em.  There was just a handful of us, and Joe would time the trip to coincide with the weekend of the Hall of Fame Game, a now defunct midsummer ritual that featured two MLB teams playing an exhibition at the Hall’s little, old timey baseball field.  I don’t remember who played when we went, just that none of the starters made much of an appearance.  Can’t say as I really blame them; they play the game hard every day, they weren’t yet millionaires, days off are few and far between at the height of Summer, and not everyone lives to play baseball like I did when I was 11.  The other day of the trip was spent at the Hall of Fame itself.

Those two trips to Cooperstown are the only times I’ve been to the Hall, and I absolutely loved it.  It was during my first trip that I came across the legendary footage of Bob Feller throwing a fastball, racing it against a speeding motorcycle.  It was before the War and they didn’t have radar guns, so they figured the best way to measure the young phenom’s fastball was to have him throw one and time his release to coincide it with a motorcycle streaking by, with both the ball and the bike set to burst through a paper barrier 60 feet away.  Not exactly hard science, but hey, you don’t create legends with protractors and Bunsen Burners.  You do it with a teenage Major Leaguer going mano a mano with some dude on a motorcycle.

On film they show it in slow motion, and Feller’s ball clearly beats the motorcycle through the paper.  Not only that, he shot the pitch right through the goddamn bullseye, a small, black hole in the center of the white paper.  They guesstimated that he threw about 104.  Nobody throws 104.  Not Sandy Koufax, not Nolan Ryan, not Roger Clemens, not Randy Johnson. Nobody.  But maybe Bob Feller did.

Later that day I was at a cage where they did have a radar gun.  Me and a friend took turns.  You got three throws for a dollar.  When you were done, the skinny, mustachioed carny in charge gave you a little certificate with the fastest of your three throws printed on it.  I hit 49 mph.

You can look up Bob Feller’s stats and you’ll be stunned that he’s not talked about more in the conversations about the all time greatest.  Absolute domination until he blew out his arm.  But that’s okay.  Feller was a legend.  And legends aren’t born from stat sheets.  Legends emerge from the mist and are shrouded in hearsay.  Legends are like Feller, a high school kid from Van Meter, Iowa, who grew up playing on the ball diamond his dad carved out of the cornfields, complete with bleachers and a scoreboard.  A legend is kid known as “The Heater from Van Meter,” who in violation of the rules of the day skipped the minors altogether, made his big league debut at the age of 17, promptly struck out 17 batters, and then went back to Iowa to finish high school.

But what can be verified is this.  On December 8, 1941, the day following the attack on Pearl Harbor, 23 year old Robert William Andrew Feller became the very first Major League Baseball player to volunteer for service in World War II.  He joined the Navy and saw action in the Pacific as a Gun Captain aboard the USS Alabama.  He earned five campaign ribbons and eight battle stars, and he is the only Chief Petty Officer in the Hall of Fame.

You better believe Bob Feller threw 104.

You can also find me every Saturday at Meet the Matts.