In ‘40, Feller Gave Himself a Tough Act to Follow

In the second inning of the American League’s 1940 season opener between the Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians, Bob Feller walked the bases loaded and was visited on the mound by Oscar Vitt, the Cleveland manager.

“I was wild, on the verge of walking myself out of the game,” Feller said in recollection the other day. “Oscar asked how I felt and I told him that I thought I could get out of it.

“If it had been later in the game or, maybe, later in the season he might have taken me out.”

And major league baseball would still be without an opening day no-hitter, for Feller struck out Bob Kennedy, ending that second-inning threat, overcame five walks and pitched the Indians to a 1-0 victory in which he did not allow a hit.

As the 1990 season opens today, the 71-year-old Feller is celebrating the golden anniversary--April 16 is the official date--of that first and last opening-day no-hitter, fashioned before a crowd of 14,000 at Comiskey Park on what Feller recalled as a cool and overcast afternoon.

“Seems like yesterday almost,” Feller said by phone from his home in Gates Mills, Ohio, a rural suburb of Cleveland.

His memory has been jogged by a spate of calls regarding the accomplishment and the release of a book he wrote in collaboration with Bill Gilbert, “Now Pitching, Bob Feller.”

“As time goes on it becomes more and more important and something of a trivia and nostalgia piece because baseball has never had another (no-hitter on opening day),” Feller said. “It’s a nice honor and I appreciate the attention, but it certainly wasn’t the greatest game I ever pitched.

“I had much better stuff in many other games, including the no-hitter I pitched against the (New York) Yankees in 1946. I had 11 strikeouts in that game.”

At 21 and embarking on his fifth major league season after coming off a farm in Van Meter, Iowa, to spend parts of the 1936 and ’37 seasons with the Indians before becoming a 1938 regular, Feller struck out eight in that opening-day no-hitter of 1940, the first of his three no-hitters.

He also pitched 12 one-hitters, a major league record, and said, “I’d be the first to admit that you have to be lucky (to pitch a no-hitter).

“I don’t know how many I’d have pitched if it hadn’t been for a broken-bat hit or a ball lost in the wind or a pop fly that fell between two fielders who didn’t call for it.

“That’s part of the game and I’m not complaining. I’m just saying you have to be lucky, and I probably was in that opening-day game, considering I didn’t have my best stuff.”

He definitely didn’t have it in his final tuneup, being belted for 10 runs and 15 hits in a five-inning exhibition stint against the New York Giants.

“As long as I was in condition with no aches and pains I wasn’t concerned,” Feller said. “That’s all it was was a tuneup, and I didn’t want to beat my brains out in that game and have nothing against the White Sox.”

The Times’ front page headline on the morning of April 16 read: “British Troops Land in Norway Harbors for Hitler Showdown.”

There was a box providing “The War at a Glance.” The car dealer, Earle C. Anthony, was selling Packards starting at $867. Foreman and Clark advertised a two-pants suit at $25.

And in that era long before free agency and arbitration, Rapid Robert Feller, his 100-m.p.h. fastball having already put him on the cover of Time magazine and helped produce records of 17-11 and 24-9 in 1938 and ‘39, was guaranteed a 1940 salary of what now seems to be a very modest $40,000.

In his book, Feller writes: “When players of my era talk about changes in the game today, they keep coming back to the same overriding difference--the declining emphasis on a team because the players are so worried about building up their individual numbers. That goes right back to the money factor.”

Asked about today’s salaries, Feller said:

“I do think we’ve seen a different emphasis on the part of the players, but if the owners are willing to pay, it’s none of my business. The TV, attendance and merchandising income is so big they obviously feel they can afford it.

“I was active in the late ‘50s in the formation of the first player union, but I never envisioned it becoming the powerful force it is today.”

Feller said the union seems to have become an unreasonable entity that feels it has to have the last word on every issue and no longer serves the interests of the players because of the obstinacy and derogatory style of its leaders.

He said the union has replaced the negotiating table with a stone wall, but he acknowledged that the growth of the pension fund has provided security for many old-time players and that many more are expected to be covered under an arrangement currently being formulated by those same union leaders.

None of that, of course, was on anyone’s mind in 1940. Even the war in Europe seemed like a distant storm.

Among those intent on putting it out of their thoughts and enjoying the Comiskey Park opener, were Feller’s mom, dad and sister.

A year earlier, on opening day of 1939, while in the process of watching her son pitch the Indians to victory in the same park, Feller’s mom’s day was disrupted when Marv Owen, the Chicago third baseman, sliced a line drive into the seats, striking her squarely in the face.

She was hospitalized for two weeks with blackened eyes and assorted cuts, but courageously returned for opening day of 1940, when no one on the White Sox hit the ball--fair or foul--harder than Owen did the year before.

“After that second inning, we picked up a run in the fourth and I didn’t have any real trouble the rest of the way,” Feller said. “No one on our bench would talk about it, but I knew what the situation was. Every pitcher does. I told the guys later that they didn’t have to avoid it because I don’t believe in superstitions.”

Feller had two out in the ninth when confronted by Luke Appling, the White Sox Hall of Fame shortstop. In his book, Feller provides interesting perspective on Appling and the situation:

“Luke was ‘Ol Aches and Pains’ because he was always complaining of various hurts, but it never seemed to bother him when it came to playing some of the best defense of any shortstop in the majors or hitting .388 to lead the league, which he did four years before.

“There was one other thing that Luke did better than anyone else in the sport--hit foul balls. He was a master, the best I’ve ever seen at flicking his bat to foul off a pitch while he waited for the one he wanted. It didn’t make any difference if he had two strikes either. He was so good at it and so confident in doing it that he just stood up there and took a poke at every pitch, with no concern that he might miss it and strike out.

“He came up to bat with two outs and the bases empty in the ninth inning, determined to break up my no-hitter. Then he went into his act. The same guy who once fouled off 18 straight pitches, just to use up a lot of baseballs because he was mad at management about his contract, started doing the same thing to me. He knew what inning it was, that I had to be running out of gas pretty soon. I was a hard thrower, and by the ninth inning, hard throwers sometimes are tiring.

“Appling worked the count to two balls and two strikes and then started waving that magic wand. He fouled off the next four or five pitches. We might still be there if a counter-strategy hadn’t occurred to me. I wasn’t going to keep throwing and play into his hand, so I threw the next two pitches out of the strike zone. That got rid of Appling with a walk. I already had issued four walks, so another one wasn’t going to make any difference anyhow.

“It was an intentional walk, but nobody else knew it.”

Next up was Taft Wright, a contact hitter “who always gave me trouble,” Feller said. Wright hit a sharp grounder in the hole to the right of second baseman Ray Mack, who made a sprawling stop on the outfield grass, picked it up with his bare hand, got to his feet and nailed Wright at first.

Said Feller: “I thought it was through when he first hit it, but Ray made a heck of a play. He also made a great play on a grounder Charlie Keller hit to save my no-hitter in New York.”

Two days after the Chicago no-hitter, Feller and the Indians returned to a civic celebration in Cleveland. It was an auspicious start to an auspicious season in which Feller went 27-11, led the league in starts with 37, complete games, 31; innings pitched, 321 1/3, and strikeouts, 261, in addition to contributing four saves in six relief appearances.

Remarkably, he made nine appearances and pitched 54 innings in September, losing his final start to Detroit, 2-0, as the Tigers edged Cleveland by a game for the American League pennant.

By the end of the next season, in which he went 25-13, Feller had won 107 games, the most ever by a 22-year-old, but he then enlisted in the Navy and had almost four full years cut out of his Hall of Fame career. Feller retired with a 266-162 record but might have won 80 to 100 more games without the military interruption.

Now, almost 50 years later, he is still employed by the Indians as head of their speakers’ bureau and a part-time instructor. He tinkers with tractors on his rural acreage and attends card shows and old-timers’ games.

The White Sox will play host to the Indians Friday afternoon, and Feller’s opening-day no-hitter will be commemorated in a pregame ceremony.

“And next year everybody will be talking about the 50th anniversary of Joe DiMaggio’s (56-game) hitting streak,” Feller said. “That almost seems like yesterday, too.”