As a boy growing up in Iowa who played baseball virtually my entire life, I idolized Bob Feller, the legendary Cleveland Indians pitcher and Iowa native who grew up in Van Meter, a tiny farm town just 17 miles west of my hometown of Des Moines. Feller, who sadly died yesterday at the age of 92, was one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball history. SI.com's Joe Posanski writes today in his poignant eulogy that Feller threw the baseball faster than anyone who ever lived.
But it's what Feller did off the field that made him a genuine hero. Two days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Feller, who at the time was in his baseball prime, decided to enlist in the Navy and serve his country. He became the first pro ball player to join up to fight in World War II.
"Bullet Bob," as he was known, pitched for the Norfolk Naval Training Station team in Virginia, then requested sea duty. After attending gunnery school, he joined the crew of the battleship USS Alabama in September 1942 and served as chief of a 24-man antiaircraft battery in the North Atlantic and during eight amphibious invasions in the Pacific. Feller was decorated with five campaign ribbons and eight stars during the war. He missed four professional baseball seasons, but returned stronger than ever.
As Richard Goldstein of the New York Times noted today, Feller won 266 games in his 18 seasons, all with the Indians, but his service in World War II "interrupted his career in his prime and might have deprived him of 100 more victories."
Obviously, it was a much different time, a different era both in sports and in terms of public support for the war effort. As reporter and big baseball fan Eric Lach remarked today on David Kurtz's TPM blog in reference to Feller leaving Major League Baseball to join the military:
