Bob Feller, 1918-2010: One of Baseball’s Finest Pitchers

08 January 2011

Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller is shown at spring baseball training in 1959.

BARBARA KLEIN:I’m Barbara Klein.

STEVE EMBER: And I’m Steve Ember with PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English. Today we tell about Bob Feller, one of the best pitchers in the history of American baseball.

(MUSIC)

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: “I didn’t know much. I just reared back and let them go. Where the ball went was up to heaven. Sometimes I threw the ball clean up into the stands.”

BARBARA KLEIN: Those were the words of Bob Feller, talking about his pitching. Robert William Andrew Feller was born in nineteen eighteen in the small town of Van Meter, Iowa. He grew up on his family’s farm nearby. When he was not working in the fields, Bob was throwing a rubber ball against the side of a barn. Or playing catch with his father.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: “My father loved baseball and he cultivated my talent. I don’t think he ever had any doubt in his mind that I would play professional baseball someday.”

Major League Baseball Hall of Fame member Bob Feller with grandson Dan Feller.

STEVE EMBER: Bob played baseball in high school. At the age of sixteen, he secretly signed an agreement with a major league baseball team, the Cleveland Indians. He received one dollar and a baseball signed by the Cleveland players. Bob Feller became a professional baseball player at the age of seventeen while he was still in high school. He never pitched in the minor leagues, as most players do today.