The Victory Season Page 25

  Musial had hit .500 in the four-game sweep, with 2 homers, 2 triples, 3 RBIs, 5 runs scored, and a steal of home, along with playing error-free ball at a brand-new position. He pretty much cemented the NL MVP Award with the performance, especially with the New York press horde in town.

  Philly came to town next, and Dyer was worried about a letdown, so he called a meeting and exhorted his guys at length about the import of keeping their momentum. Inspired, the Cards went out and lost 10–7. “Dyer is no William Jennings Bryan,” wrote Broeg. But the Cards won the following four games to thrust themselves into first place.

  Brooklyn had it worse. They took a desultory train trip to Cincinnati, getting to the hotel late at night. Roommates Higbe and Hugh Casey somehow neglected to lock the door of their suite (alcohol may have been involved), and a thief crept in and relieved the hurlers of $300 in cash and their paychecks, which they had received on the train. Even worse, the cat burglar swiped Higbe’s social security card, so he was able to brazenly roll into a bank and cash both checks. Officials said the man spoke knowledgeably about other Dodgers when quizzed by excited employees.

  For Harry the Hat, the postwar period that began by losing the ETO World Series was getting worse in 1946. During the tournament that culminated in the ETO Series, Walker hit third or cleanup, leaning in to try to pull the ball more often, looking for the power expected from his spot in the lineup. Back in St. Louis, he was hitting much lower in the order but still retained his wartime hitting style. It detracted from his natural ability to slap hits up the middle and the other way, skills that had gotten him to the majors. Unlike Musial, his wartime adjustments didn’t enhance his hitting.

  Of course, Walker was no Musial, but like Stash, who had overcome injury to achieve stardom, Walker kept getting shoved down only to rise again. He was nowhere near the prospect his older brother Dixie was coming out of Leeds, but he perfected what he called a “pushing and shoving kind of baseball,” and the Cardinals prized grinders like him.

  Harry and his wife, Dot, hadn’t seen much of each other for a while now. Walker went straight from the army to Cards camp, and then was on the road quite often during the season. They clearly shared at least one night of fun, however, for Mrs. Walker was with child, and she bore her burden around St. Louis during the long, hot summer. In early August, Harry was in Cincinnati with the team, and Dot took their three-year-old, Terry Walker (named for Terry Moore), over to the home of Marty Marion in the Brentwood section of town. The Marions had a daughter nearly Terry’s age, and both children had new tennis balls they were anxious to play with.

  Dot was inside sewing with Mrs. Marion when Terry said he had to go outside and retrieve his ball from a neighbor boy, who had taken it. A few minutes later, the other child came to the door, frantic—young Terry had been hit by a car.

  Dot raced to Terry as quickly as her seven-months-pregnant body could, finding him alive but badly injured. She delivered him to the hospital and sat in the waiting room, her maternity clothes covered in blood, while Terry underwent hours of surgery. His head and legs were in bad shape, but Terry pulled through—for the time being, at least.

  Harry left the team and spent a couple of days with his family, but duty called, and he was back with the team in Chicago, the next stop on the road trip. By that point, the Cardinals and Dodgers were neck and neck. Durocher’s return to the dugout revivified the Brooks, who won nine of eleven to close out July, including a vengeful win over Pollet at Ebbets Field.

  With two months to play, there was nothing to separate the two teams. Both sides girded for a battle to the end.

  Chapter 27

  CPO Feller

  Thirty-one thousand fans packed Griffith Stadium in Washington DC on August 20, a sizable chunk of the 1,027,216 folks that would pass through the old barn’s gates in 1946, twice as many as had been coming out in recent years, and a full quarter as many as had seen the Senators play in the entire decade of the 1930s.

  Most of the crowd had been lured to the park on this Tuesday evening to see the game’s best pitcher perform. Bob Feller was 21–8, en route to a 26–15 mark and a workhorse season in which he led the AL in starts, innings pitched, complete games, and shutouts.

  Oh, and strikeouts. Of course, strikeouts. Because what Ted Williams was to hitting, Joe DiMaggio to graceful play, Stan Musial to class, “Rapid Robert” Feller was to throwing hard. It was his signature, his path to the bigs. And on this day in particular, it was going to be his moneymaker—or else.

  Seems the smart guys in the military research lab had come up with a device to measure the speed of objects hurtling through the air, such as anti-tank missiles or artillery shells. Now that the war was over, it seemed only natural to deploy the “Lumiline Chronograph,” as the instrument was called, on a weapon slightly less dangerous to enemy personnel—the Feller fastball.

  A speed test had been arranged for that night in Griffith Stadium, with Feller whipping a few heaters at the machine before the game to put a scientific—nay, military—imprimatur on his velocity. Unfortunately, Clark Griffith, the owner of the Senators and the park and this sideshow, had neglected to inform Feller that there were to be two performances that day.

  “It was like telling Fred Astaire he’d be doing his dance routines before the game,” Feller said, “and the owner was going to make a lot of money from it and not give Astaire anything. You can imagine what Fred Astaire would have said about that. Well, I was saying the same thing.”

  “Rapid Robert” was not one to be trifled with when it came to cash. Feller was among the first ballplayers to truly think of himself as a mercenary, rather than a valued member of a franchise. He was loyal to the Indians, but only because they paid him. Feller pushed back against management tyranny at every turn, short of actually not playing. He also maximized income streams from every possible angle, most notably arranging barnstorming tours in the off-season (where he had tangled with Jackie Robinson). Red Smith called Feller’s thirst for a buck “his customary search through the shrubbery for loose dimes,” and this little extravaganza had the whiff of a quick payday.

  So Feller refused to take part, staying under the stands until Griffith was forced to come down to him and negotiate. A few minutes later, Feller walked out to a loud ovation, $700 richer.

  The Chronograph used photoelectric cells to clock whatever passed through the V-shaped opening on top of the device. It was mounted in front of the plate on wooden brackets, not unlike the method used to hang the first atomic devices off the ground in Los Alamos. It spent most of its time at the Aberdeen Ordnance proving ground over in Maryland, but had come into town with its army minders, along with Universal Newsreel cameras and dozens of press.

  Feller took the mound, windmilled his arm a couple of times, then went into his easy, high-kicking delivery, humming one to catcher Frankie Hayes. The second pitch was the fastest the machine recorded, at 98.6 mph. However, since the machine measured the speed of the ball as it passed through its sensors, unlike modern radar guns that clock the ball as it leaves the pitcher’s hand, it actually flew much harder. Some estimates put the fastball at 101–103 mph, others as high as 107.6 mph.

  His fifth pitch missed the opening and slammed into the wooden support, splitting the wood and ending the test at a tidy $140 per throw. Apparently spent from the effort, Feller went out and lost 5–4 to the Sens.

  Feller could be a gruff SOB with a loud opinion on most subjects, an abrasive personality who grew sharper edges as he aged and found little good to say about modern baseball and its players, whom he declared to be greedy, without apparent irony. Feller was also intensely patriotic, and his experience during the war colored his future perspective on those who were without national service.

  Feller had volunteered for the navy on December 8, 1941. Later he was asked why he hadn’t delayed his induction until he was called up. “The country is at war and we are losing,” was his reply. That summed up the no-nonsense approach he had taken to lif
e since coming off the farm in Van Meter, Iowa, to pitch in the big leagues at age seventeen. His very first start resulted in a fifteen-strikeout performance against the Browns, and he pitched a no-hitter on opening day, 1940. That fastball made him arguably the best hurler in the league, so he had good reason to stay in baseball until the war couldn’t wait.

  But not only did Feller join up straightaway, he also itched to escape Gene Tunney’s physical training program, a cushy gig that would have allowed Feller to pitch instead of fight. So he went to naval gunnery school, and soon was placed aboard the battleship USS Alabama. For the first six months or so, duty was in the Atlantic, and light. “I was playing softball in Iceland in the spring,” he remembered. But come 1943, the Alabama sailed to the South Pacific and went toe to toe with the Japanese Imperial Navy.

  The battle wagon took part in several major campaigns, including the invasions of the Gilberts, Tarawa, Nauru, and the Marshalls, dubbed “Operation Flintlock.” Truk, Tinian, Saipan, and Guam followed, and on to Palau, Ulithi, Yap, and the Philippines, including the legendary Battle of Leyte Gulf, where the Alabama was a picket defender for Admiral William “Bull” Halsey’s flagship, the carrier USS Enterprise. “We have been to about every ‘hellhole’ on the face of the earth,” Feller wrote Lew Fonseca, the promotions director of the AL. Feller’s job was to direct antiaircraft fire, spotting planes, calculating their trajectory, and passing along fire solutions to the gunners. It was fast-moving duty, one not for the faint of heart or the slow of mind.

  The navy offered Feller extended leave so he could pitch against the army in inter-service games, but he refused, citing his obligation to stay with his ship and its crew. So he was part of the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the fabled “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot,” a massive Allied victory that decimated Japanese airpower for good. “It was the most exciting thirteen hours of my life,” Feller wrote in his autobiography, Now Pitching, Bob Feller. “After that, the dangers of Yankee Stadium seemed trivial.”

  One afternoon off Saipan, he spotted someone who had fallen overboard drifting away to sea. Feller called in a rescue, and the sailor sought out the pitcher to thank him profusely. Feller wasn’t so lucky on another occasion, when a crewman stopped by his berth to talk baseball, a regular occurrence on the Alabama. After the visit, the bluejacket went to dump some garbage overboard and was swept overboard by a rogue wave, never to be seen again. Feller was the last man to see him alive, and he later confessed that the incident haunted him for years.

  In the latter stages of the war, the Japanese Army Air Force, crippled by the losses over the Marianas, began its kamikaze program. Battleships like Alabama were prime targets, and the Japanese hunted Feller’s tub “like blind, maddened bulls.” Feller would earn five campaign ribbons, six citations for gallantry, and eight battle stars, but the number that meant most to him was zero. That was how many times the Alabama was hit directly by Japanese torpedoes, bombs, or kamikaze planes, and how many crewmen were lost in two-plus years of combat.

  He kept in shape on board by doing chin-ups, running around the deck, working a punching bag, and using a rowing machine. He never drank, and one time on shore leave in Scotland, he had eschewed a pub crawl in order to milk a local cow. In return, he was given several bottles of fresh milk, which he kept onboard and replenished at every opportunity.

  Chief Petty Officer Feller did take a few opportunities to show off his pitching skills, including an outing against the crew of the battleship USS Indiana in a game on Majuro Atoll in the Marshalls in June of 1944. The affair was witnessed by New Yorker war reporter Eugene Kinkead. He watched Feller, decked out in “blue dungarees, a gray sweatshirt, a nondescript cap, and…plain black dress shoes,” battle blistering heat and loud heckling from the Indiana crew, especially a Brooklyn boy yelling things like, “Oh yuh joik! Yuh couldn’t beat Detroit and yuh can’t beat us. Yuh stink.”

  The tiny field lay amid a palm grove. “A steady trade wind blew gusts of white coral dust over the infield,” wrote Kinkead, “whose surface was notable principally for a number of large rocks. The recreational officer provided three sacks for bases, a piece of wood for home plate, a strip of chicken wire for a backup, and a chaplain for an umpire.”

  Feller wasn’t especially sharp, but he managed to best the Indianans, despite the distraction of a shore party from another warship swinging at anchor at Majuro. They were hunting wild pigs in the jungle. “From time to time, we’d hear alarming scuffles and squeaks nearby,” Kinkead remembered, “and then a quartet of sailors would emerge from the undergrowth, howling triumphantly and carrying a dead wild hog, each of them holding a leg.”

  Such practice, rough and raw though it may have been, helped Feller in the spring of 1945, when Alabama was taken off the line and Feller was transferred stateside, to Great Lakes Naval Station, a service-ball powerhouse. He pitched a no-hitter for GLNS on July 21 in front of ten thousand sailors. Feller was ready for the bigs again.

  Meanwhile, Feller was getting reacquainted with his wife, Virginia Winther. They had married just before he went to sea, and had seen each other for all of five days in their two years of marriage. He was back in the majors by August and went 5–3 in nine late-season appearances with Cleveland.

  In January of 1946, after a barnstorming tour of Latin America, during which he formed an opinion on an opponent named Robinson, Feller traveled to Tampa to set up a school for returning veterans to regain their baseball skills. He recruited several other major leaguers as instructors, and for once, there wasn’t any pecuniary advantage involved. Feller made the camp gratis for anyone who could get there.

  Feller didn’t need much schooling to return to his prewar dominance. He hurled a three-hit, ten-strikeout shutout at the White Sox on opening day. Two weeks later, on April 30, the Indians were in Yankee Stadium, and Feller showed that he was indeed no longer terrorized by the House That Ruth Built. He went through his usual pregame routine, using a razor blade to shave down the calluses on his right thumb and ring finger, then picked up a ball to judge its weight. If it felt heavy, it was a bad omen, and this one felt a little fat.

  So much for superstition. Rapid Robert pitched his second career no-hitter, a 1–0 gem that Cleveland won when Frankie Hayes (the same man who sat so Harry O’Neill could have his brief entry into the majors before meeting his fate at Iwo Jima) slugged a ninth-inning homer off Bill Bevens for the only run of the game. Feller had eleven strikeouts on 132 pitches. “He made Frank Merriwell look like a bum,” said Joe McCarthy after the game. Feller’s overhead stretch hid the ball from batters, and his long delivery saw his glove hand practically brush the hitter’s cheek. He snapped his right arm forward “as though he were cracking a blacksnake whip,” is how Time put it. The Yankees never stood a chance.

  At one point, Snuffy Stirnweiss bunted, and Cleveland first-sacker Les Fleming let the ball roll through his legs. It was an error, but since the Stadium had no place on the scoreboard to inform the crowd of the scoring decision, the public-address announcer told the crowd that the play was scored an error. By the next day, MacPhail had a HIT/ERROR sign in place, the first of its kind.

  A couple of weeks later, The New Yorker ran an article contrasting the no-hitter with Feller’s impromptu game back at Majuro Atoll. “I don’t doubt that this no-hit game,” Kinkead wrote, “like the one he pitched before the war, will remain a long time in his memory, and I have a feeling that he won’t soon forget, either, that game he pitched at Majuro in between.”

  Feller would go on to win 266 games, a number that clearly would have been over 300 had he not missed three full years and most of a fourth to war. He never regretted the time away from the game. “During a war like World War II,” he said, “when we had all those men lose their lives, sports was very insignificant. I have no regrets. The only win I wanted was to win World War II. This country is what it is today because of our victory in that war.” Or, as he told ESPN decades later, “I would never have been able to face anybo
dy and talk about my baseball record if I hadn’t spent time in the service.”

  One guy watching Feller closely was an Indians farmhand named Gene Bearden. Like Feller, Bearden was a fireballer who wound up in the navy fighting the Japanese. He wasn’t as fortunate under fire, however. During the Battle of Kula Gulf in the Solomons on July 6, 1943, Bearden was blown off the second deck of the light cruiser USS Helena by torpedoes, suffering a fractured skull and a ruined right knee. He was lucky in one respect—168 sailors had been killed aboard the Helena, but not Bearden.

  He owed his life to an anonymous rescuer. “Someone pulled me out,” he remembered after the war to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “They told me later it was an officer. I don’t know how he did it. The ship went down in seventeen minutes. All I know is that I came to in the water sometime later.” The pitcher spent two days semiconscious in a life raft until he was at last pulled from the sea and brought to a hospital ship.

  Bearden got a plate in his head and a screw-in hinge in his knee, and went back to pitching. He won fifteen games with Oakland of the Pacific Coast League in 1946, and by 1948 he was in the World Series, shutting out Boston in Game Three en route to a championship.

  The vicious fighting in the Pacific claimed only one major leaguer, the aforementioned Harry O’Neill. But there were several top players who lost their lives; they wore the colors of the Imperial Japanese military. Most notably, Dai Nippon’s greatest pitcher went to war and didn’t come back.

  Eiji Sawamura was a star before Japan even had a formal baseball league. In 1934, at age seventeen, he pitched against a team of visiting Americans, an All-Star squad that included Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, and Charlie Gehringer. He struck out the Hall of Fame quartet in succession, and gave up just a single run in five innings. Onlookers swore his fastball reached 100 mph. Connie Mack was managing the squad, and tried to sign Sawamura up for the A’s right away. But the shy teen was reluctant to leave home.