Consider every pampered, arrogant, ungrateful professional athlete you know.\u00a0 And then there’s this guy.<\/p>\n
He joined the Cleveland Indians in 1936 for the bargain price of $1.\u00a0 He immediately proved himself to be one of the hardest-throwing and effective pitchers in the game.\u00a0 In his first season, at the age of 17, he struck out 17 batters in one game, becoming the first and one of only two pitchers to ever “strike out his age.”\u00a0 In 1938, he set a record for strikeouts in a game when he fanned 18. \u00a0He was the first pitcher to win 20 or more games in a season before age 21.\u00a0 He pitched a no-hitter to open the 1940 season, and remains the only pitcher to ever do so.<\/p>\n
And then.\u00a0 On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.\u00a0 On December 8, Robert William Andrew Feller of Van Meter, Iowa enlisted in the Navy, the first major leaguer to do so.\u00a0 For the next four years, at the absolute height of his athletic powers, he served aboard the USS Alabama, as a gun captain.\u00a0 Over those four “lost seasons,” he launched missiles and bullets with the same intensity that his baseball alter-ego could hurl a fastball.\u00a0 He ended the war decorated with 5 campaign ribbons and 8 battle stars.<\/p>\n
He returned to the Indians in 1945 and played for 12 more seasons.\u00a0 In his career, he pitched 3 no-hitters, and 12 one-hitters (another record).\u00a0 He led the American League in strikeouts 7 times.\u00a0 His fastball remains the second-fastest ever clocked, at 107.6 MPH, and he threw that one when he was almost 30 years old.\u00a0 He won the World Series once, amassed 266 wins and 2581 strikeouts, was an 8-time all-star, was once the league MVP runner-up and came in 3rd place for the MVP twice more.\u00a0 For all this, he was elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, in 1962.<\/p>\n
He is longest-tenured living Hall of Famer.\u00a0 This past spring – at age 91 – he threw out the first pitch at the Indians first spring training game. But then, in August he was diagnosed with leukemia and underwent chemotherapy; he had a pacemaker installed; he was treated for vertigo, thrush, and a fungal infection.\u00a0 Yesterday the sports papers reported the news that\u00a0 “Rapid Robert,” “Bullet Bob,” thrower of the “Heater from Van Meter,” was nearing his end.\u00a0 Last night, he was moved into a hospice in Cleveland.<\/p>\n
And last night in Mobile Bay, aboard the USS Alabama, they polished the plaque that sits next to the humble bunk he slept in for almost four years, to commemorate his service:\u00a0 Cleveland Indian Bob Feller, the only Chief Petty Officer in the Baseball Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Consider every pampered, arrogant, ungrateful professional athlete you know.\u00a0 And then there’s this guy. He joined the Cleveland Indians in 1936 for the bargain price of $1.\u00a0 He immediately proved himself to be one of the hardest-throwing and effective pitchers in the game.\u00a0 In his first season, at the age…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[113,157,262,928,1282,1369],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5","tag-baseball-hall-of-fame","tag-bob-feller","tag-cleveland-indians","tag-pearl-harbor","tag-uss-alabama","tag-world-war-2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}