This day in baseball: 1939 All-Star Game
Posted: July 11, 2020 Filed under: 20th Century, This day in baseball | Tags: All-Star Game, American League, Baseball, Bob Feller, Cleveland Indians, Joe DiMaggio, Major League Baseball, MLB, National League, New York Yankees, sports, Yankee Stadium Leave a commentThe 1939 All-Star Game was held on July 11th at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, where the American League defeated the National League, 3-1. Two of the three AL runs were driven in by Yankees players (the third was an unearned run scored on an error), including a DiMaggio home run. Indians pitcher Bob Feller, only twenty years old at the time, threw 3.2 scoreless innings to earn the save.
The box score for the game can be found here.

Bob Feller (Wikimedia Commons)
Quote of the day
Posted: November 20, 2019 Filed under: Quote of the day | Tags: Baseball, Bob Feller, Joe DiMaggio, Major League Baseball, MLB, quotes, sports, Ted Williams 3 CommentsTed Williams was the greatest hitter I ever saw, but DiMaggio was the greatest all around player.
~Bob Feller

Bob Feller (Wikimedia Commons)
This day in baseball: Feller’s first major league appearance
Posted: July 6, 2019 Filed under: 20th Century, This day in baseball | Tags: Baseball, Bob Feller, Cleveland Indians, Major League Baseball, MLB, sports, St. Louis Cardinals Leave a commentIn his first major league appearance on July 6, 1936, seventeen-year-old Indians rookie Bob Feller pitched in an All-Star break exhibition game against the Cardinals’ Gashouse Gang. After the first batter was thrown out trying to bunt, Feller proceeded to strike out eight consecutive batters in three innings.

Wikimedia Commons
This day in baseball: Feller’s contract
Posted: January 21, 2019 Filed under: 20th Century, This day in baseball | Tags: Baseball, Bob Feller, Cleveland Indians, Dazzy Vance, history, Lefty Grove, Major League Baseball, MLB, sports 2 CommentsTwenty-two-year-old Bob Feller signed a deal with the Indians on January 21, 1941 reportedly worth $30,000. This made Feller the highest paid pitcher in baseball history. The previous high salary for a single season of pitching had been $27,500 to Dazzy Vance and Lefty Grove.

Wikimedia Commons
This day in baseball: Feller is the MLBPA’s first president
Posted: December 11, 2018 Filed under: 20th Century, This day in baseball | Tags: Baseball, Bob Feller, Frank Scott, history, Major League Baseball, Major League Baseball Players Association, Marvin Miller, MLB, MLBPA, sports Leave a commentA major league player association was formed on December 11, 1956 with future Hall of Famer Bob Feller named its first president. Feller held the position until 1959, when he was succeeded by Frank Scott. This organization followed up many previous attempts to create a labor organization in Major League Baseball. It would eventually become successful ten years later when Marvin Miller was hired to be the MLBPA’s first executive director in 1966.

Bob Feller (Wikimedia Commons)
Ken Burns’s Baseball: The Sixth Inning
Posted: November 20, 2017 Filed under: 20th Century | Tags: All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, Babe Ruth, Baseball, Bing Crosby, Bob Feller, Boston Red Sox, Branch Rickey, Brooklyn Dodgers, Buck O'Neil, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Great Depression, history, Jackie Robinson, Jackie Robinson Day, Joe DiMaggio, Ken Burns, Larry MacPhail, Major League Baseball, Montreal Royals, Negro league baseball, Negro Leagues, Notre Dame, Ohio Wesleyan University, Philip Wrigley, Roger Angell, Rookie of the Year, Satchel Paige, St. Louis Cardinals, Ted Williams, World War II Leave a commentThe Sixth Inning of Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns explores the national pastime during the 1940s, which was quite the tumultuous decade in American history. It was a decade of war as the United States recovered from the Great Depression and found itself in a position of having to enter World War II. It was also the decade of Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio, of women’s professional baseball, and of Jackie Robinson.
In a chronological sense, the Sixth Inning was an easier one to follow along with than any of the Innings that preceded it. The first part of this disc was dominated by two of the game’s greatest hitters. 1941 was the summer of Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, whose hitting performances captivated the baseball world. Joe DiMaggio’s fifty-six game hitting streak and Ted Williams’s .406 season average have both remained unmatched ever since.
The 1941 World Series resulted in a devastating loss for the Brooklyn Dodgers to the New York Yankees. At the end of the season, Dodgers general manager Larry MacPhail , drunk and belligerent, threatened to sell off all his players. The Dodgers instead opted to let go of MacPhail and brought in Branch Rickey, thus setting the stage for the breaking of the color barrier in the coming years.
When the United States entered the war, Franklin Roosevelt insisted that baseball ought to continue. The country would be working longer and harder, and thus recreation became more important than ever, he said. However, this didn’t shield players from the draft, and baseball still suffered as a result. Players like DiMaggio and Bob Feller joined the war effort. Meanwhile, baseball turned to signing players (and umpires) who didn’t meet the usual caliber of play just to keep going.
As the war also drew away a number of minor leaguers, Philip Wrigley came up with the idea of starting a women’s professional baseball league in order to fill the baseball void as minor league teams fell apart. Women from all over, particularly softball players, were recruited. They had to be able to play ball, but they were also required to remain unequivocally feminine. Off the field, any time they were in public, they were required to be in skirts, heels, and makeup — a requirement that I, for one, would find very difficult to swallow.
Following the war, the disc goes into the story of Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson. The story from Rickey’s time coaching at Ohio Wesleyan University, checking into a hotel in South Bend, Indiana to play Notre Dame, is absolutely heartbreaking, and certainly explains a lot regarding his determination to integrate baseball.
Branch Rickey certainly did his homework when choosing a player to break the color barrier, and clearly, he choose well. Promising not to retaliate and turn the other cheek for three years (three years!), Jackie Robinson signed with the Montreal Royals.
Burns breaks from the Jackie Robinson saga long enough to cover the 1946 World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Boston Red Sox. Though the Sox were the heavy favorites to win, the Cards employed the “Williams shift” to prevent Ted Williams from having much success at the plate. Thanks in part to this strategy, the Cardinals won that year’s Series. Roger Angell says it well when he explains that baseball is not a game about winning, like we think it is, but rather, it is a game about losing.
Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 was certainly an event, one that we continue to celebrate today. As expected, he endured an endless stream of taunts, threats, and even attempts at actual bodily harm. Through it all, he bit his tongue. Instead, he let his performance on the field speak for him. Not only was he named Rookie of the Year at the end of the season, he was also determined to be the second most popular man in America, after Bing Crosby. Robinson’s efforts eventually allowed other black players, including the great pitcher Satchel Paige, to break into the majors as well.
Ken Burns does a good job of pointing out that, for all the virtues that surrounded Robinson’s trek into Major League Baseball, it was a devastating event for the Negro Leagues. The Brooklyn Dodgers became the team of black America, and attendance at Negro Leagues games declined. As we know now, the Negro Leagues would eventually meet its end as a result.
The disc ends with the death of Babe Ruth in 1948. It’s only appropriate that the Sultan of Swat would receive this kind of nod (and convenient that he would die at the end of a decade — not to be morbid or anything). Burns never touches on what Ruth thought of Jackie Robinson, nor on what Robinson thought of Ruth. Perhaps nobody knows. But as Buck O’Neil points out, both men were giants in the game. Each of them, in their own way, changed baseball forever.
Infographic: Opening Day Winners
Posted: March 31, 2017 Filed under: 21st Century | Tags: Baseball, Bob Feller, infographics, Major League Baseball, Opening Day Leave a commentIt’s practically here — can you feel it? This infographic is from 2011, so these numbers won’t be entirely accurate, though Bob Feller does still have the only Opening Day no-hitter.
Clearing the Bases, by Gene A. Budig
Posted: August 9, 2016 Filed under: 20th Century, 21st Century | Tags: Baseball, Bill Madden, Bob Feller, Bobby Brown, books, Cal Ripken Jr, Frank Robinson, Gene Budig, George Brett, history, Joe Torre, Major League Baseball, Marty Springstead, Mike Ilitch, University of Kansas 3 CommentsGene Budig is a former American League President. He’s also a former chancellor of the University of Kansas, where I happen to work. Budig’s tenure as chancellor happened before my time at KU, but when his book Clearing the Bases came out, it was made available to employees of the university. A few weeks ago, a lady I work with came across a long-forgotten stack of the book, and knowing that I am a baseball fan, offered one to me.
Clearing the Bases: Nine Who Did It with Grit and Class offers biographical sketches of nine individuals who had an impact on the game of baseball. The book discusses Cal Ripken, Jr., Bobby Brown, George Brett, Joe Torre, Bob Feller, Mike Ilitch, Marty Springstead, Bill Madden, and Frank Robinson. Budig gives information about their backgrounds, their careers, and their accomplishments. Furthermore, Budig knew each of these individuals personally and offers his own candid insights into their character and impact.
Perhaps my favorite part about these biographies, however, is that they also make mention of community contributions that each of these men have made. Bobby Brown, for example, went to medical school and became a cardiologist. Joe Torre and his wife created the Joe Torre Safe at Home Foundation, and he campaigns against any type of domestic abuse. Bob Feller served for four years in the United States Navy, right as he would’ve been in his prime as a baseball player.
Furthermore, Budig doesn’t talk merely about baseball players. He includes figures who have impacted the game in other ways. Marty Springstead was an umpire. Michael Ilitch owns the Detroit Tigers, the Detroit Red Wings, and founded Little Caesar’s Pizza. Bill Madden is a sportswriter.
This book is a fast read, too. I made my way through it in one afternoon and enjoyed every minute of it. Budig’s writing style is engaging and certainly not the over-complicated rhetoric that one often sees with academics. It appears there was a second edition of the book released a couple years after this one, titled Swinging For the Fences. I do not know whether there are any significant differences between that edition and Clearing the Bases. So far as I have been able to tell from what I’ve seen online, they appear to be the same book. That would be another title to watch for, if you are considering giving this one a read.
This day in baseball: Feller’s second no-hitter
Posted: April 30, 2016 Filed under: 20th Century, This day in baseball | Tags: Baseball, Bob Feller, Charlie Keller, Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, Frankie Hayes, history, Joe DiMaggio, Major League Baseball, MLB, New York Yankees, sports, Tommy Henrich, Yankee Stadium Leave a commentIndians pitcher Bob Feller threw the second no-hitter of his career on April 30, 1946. He struck out eleven batters (and allowed five walks) as the Indians defeated the Yankees, 1-0. Feller said of the game, “The no-hitter on opening day in Chicago is the one that gets all the attention. But my no-hitter at Yankee Stadium was against a much better team than the White Sox. There was no comparison. I had to pitch to Tommy Henrich, Charlie Keller and Joe DiMaggio in the ninth inning to get the Yankees out.” The lone run in the game came on a home run by Frankie Hayes.

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