When Bob Feller was growing up on a farm in Van Meter, Iowa, in the 1920s and ?30s, his father built him a baseball diamond on that farm and invited the neighborhood kids to play. His father caught him every night. In the summer, he caught him in the hog lot, in the winter in the barn, and virtually willed his son to the major leagues.
And Bob Feller signed a major league career and was pitching for the Cleveland Indians before he was even out of high school. In his first four full seasons in the major leagues, he won 100 games.
Then on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed on Pearl Harbor.
The next day, Bob visited his father, who was dying of brain cancer, and he asked for his permission to enlist in the U.S. Navy. His father gave him his OK.
Bob then drove to Cleveland from Iowa to ask permission of his employer, the Cleveland Indians, and they said to him, “You know, Bob, you don?t have to go; you?re the only son, your dad?s dying, so you don?t have to go.” He said, “I know I don?t have to go, I want to go,” and they reluctantly agreed to let him go.
He enlisted on Dec. 9, 1941, and did his duty to the last day of the war ? no special treatment, just a sailor who fought in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. He was decorated with five campaign ribbons, studded with eight battle stars.
His first full season back, 1946, he won 26 games after being out for four years; he finished 36 games. And years later, when people would say to him, “You know, Bob, you gave up those four years; if you would have stayed here, you would have won 100 more games. And his reply was, and is today at age 87, “The Germans don?t play baseball, and if we lost that war, America wouldn?t be playing baseball any more either.”
It was Bob?s way of putting into perspective what was at stake, what we almost lost in World War II.
Dale Petroskey is president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y. This article is an excerpt of a speech given to the National Press Club on July 6.
