16 Dec Bob Feller
Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio faces Cleveland fastballer Bob Feller, who died Wednesday.
“I don’t think anyone is ever going to throw a ball faster than he does,” DiMaggio predicted.
Feller was a 17-year-old high school student when he pitched his first game for the Indians and struck out 15 batters. Three weeks later he struck out 17, tying Dizzy Dean’s Major League record.
“By the end of his brief rookie season,” the New York Times reports, “Feller was the best-known young person in America, with the possible exception of Shirley Temple.”
In 1937, with his picture on the cover of Time, he opened his first full season with a no-hitter. He would go on to pitch two more no-hitters and 12 one-hitters in an 18-year career. In all, Feller won 266 games and struck out 2,581 batters, tallies that would be much higher had he not lost four seasons to World War II military service.
Feller also inspired one of the great lines of baseball history. After Yankees pitcher Lefty Gomez took three called strikes from Feller, he is said to have protested, “That last one sounded a little low.”