Top 106 Baseball Players: #79 - Bob Feller

Bob Feller

Bob Feller was one of the youngest players ever to play in the Major Leagues, and he was a star player right from day one, and had it not been for World War II, he probably would have easily been among the top 25 players of all time.

Feller joined the Indians in July 1936, and in his first start he struck out 15 batters, a record for a pitching debut. Two weeks later, he struck out 17, tying the single-game record at the time. He left the team before the season ended to return home to Iowa to begin his senior year of high school.

Two years later, he was called upon to pitch the final game against the Detroit Tigers, whose star player, Hank Greenberg, needed 2 home runs to tie Babe Ruth's record. Feller responded by setting a new strikeout record with 18, and he led the entire league with 240 strikeouts while still a teenager.

Feller led the league in strikeouts for 7 consecutive full seasons, four before the war and 3 afterward. He was definitely the best pitcher in baseball and had been for years when Pearl Harbor was bombed. He left the team the next day to joint the Navy, becoming the first professional athlete to join the service, and he was later joined by many of the greatest players of his era.

His military service cost him nearly 4 years from the prime of his career, but when he came back, he picked up right where he left off, again leading the league in strikeouts and setting a new record for strikeouts in a season with 348 in 1946.

Perhaps the biggest thing lacking in his career was postseason success. He led the Indians to the World Series in 1948, which they won, but Feller lost both of his starts and posted an ERA of 5.02 in those two games, so he was the reason they got there, but not the reason they won. When they returned to the World Series in 1954, he was on the active roster but was not used.

Feller threw 3 no-hitters during his career and 12 one-hitters, both records at the time of his retirement. During the offseasons, he would gather a group of other Major Leaguers and play a series of exhibition games against Negro League teams, and those games played a huge role in helping people realize that the Negro League players were just as good and helped break the color barrier.

Feller was the definition of phenom, and a true strikeout artist, as well as a courageous hero for sacrificing the best years of his career to defend our country. Even though he appears much lower on this list than he would have if he hadn't missed those seasons, there is no way a player of Feller's ability could be left off the list of the all-time greats.