Pitching great Bob Feller has fond memories of many Hall of Famers: right-hander who won 266 games in a career that spanned 18 seasons recalls some of the majors' best performers

Baseball Digest, July, 2005 by John McMurray

DURING A AN 18-YEAR HALL OF FAME CAREER THAT SPANNED FROM 1936 TO 11956, Bob Feller had the opportunity to see or know the vast majority of players in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Feller, who will be 87 years old on November 3, 2005, has himself been a member of the Hall of Fame since 1962, longer than any living player. He continues to make many public appearances for the Cleveland Indians, and he has a vote on the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee. Here, Feller offers his reflections on some early century players and on some former Cleveland Indians teammates:

On Cy Young: "I knew Cy Young quite well. He used to come to a lot of the games at League Park and also at Municipal Stadium. I had a lot of pictures taken with him ,and sat and visited with him. I admired him because he never criticized the current players during my time and he never said the old-timers were better or went into that pitch which sometimes you hear from the fellows of my time about the present day players. He never complained about the present players during my career.

Cy Young never offered any unsolicited advice (on pitching), or if you ever asked him, he never had any comments about how to do this or how to do that. The main thing, of course, everybody knows is to throw a strike. That's no secret.

I knew him from some social functions. I attended his funeral, right near Newcomerstown, Ohio. I went down there and went to his funeral services and to the cemetery. Cy, of course, pitched the dead ball, and he could throw 60 to 80 pitches in those days and pitch a complete game. The ball wasn't going to go anywhere. Very rarely would players hit home runs. So it was a matter of just throwing the ball over the plate. You didn't have to throw a hundred and thirty or forty pitches to complete a game, or anything near over a hundred."

On Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson: "I first met Ty Cobb in Atlanta in 1937 when I pitched a game against Carl Hubbell in old Ponce DeLeon Park in Atlanta. After watching me pitch, Cobb said: 'Well, the kid's pretty fast. I'd probably have to hit him to left!' I met Walter Johnson in Washington. He was with Clark Griffith, and he said 'I think I can throw a mite harder than you can.' Of course, Walter did not have a curveball. He was a one-pitch pitcher. He threw fastballs by most of the hitters. Of course you can't throw it by everybody, but, as far as I'm concerned, he was the greatest right-handed pitcher who ever lived."

On Babe Ruth Day, June 13, 1948 at Yankee Stadium, when terminally ill Ruth used Feller's bat to keep his balance while speaking: "That bat is in my museum right now in Van Meter, Iowa. I got that bat back. It took a long time to get it, but I got it back. One of my teammates took it and hid it after Babe signed it, and then I bought it back from a fellow that won it in a contest after (collector) Barry Halper sold all his memorabilia.

Babe came walking out of the runway. He was dying of throat cancer. He was very feeble. He probably only weighed about 145 to 150 pounds. He reached in the bat rack there in the third base dugout, which was our dugout, the visiting team dugout. He grabbed a bat at random to use for a cane and to lean on. And, as a coincidence, it was my bat. He had no idea whose bat it was. I was warming up to pitch the ballgame, and he just took that bat and leaned on it. One of my teammates had (Ruth) sign it, and that teammate put it away and hid it. And then the bat came back to me later by way of Barry Halper, who bought it from my teammate. (Halper) auctioned it off, then Upper Deck ran a contest, and this guy from Seattle won it. I bought it back for my museum from this man in Seattle, Washington."

On Tris Speaker and others: "Tris Speaker did some P.R. for the Indians (while Feller was playing). He did some public relations in Florida as well as over in New Orleans. He was on our staff out there in Tucson, the first year we were out there. I've got a picture of him and Rogers Hornsby, who was our batting coach in 1947. Hornsby, Tris Speaker, and Ty Cobb, and I, we were visiting one time out there.

"Ty was on vacation, being out there at the Arizona Inn in Tucson and we got together and had a picture taken. I had a uniform on, the rest of them were in street clothes. I knew most all the old-timers.

"Larry Lajoie used to be hanging around the golf course down there in Lakewood, Florida when I went down there with my dad and mother and played golf with my dad and Cy Slapnicka, the scout that signed me. Lajoie was a pleasant person. He was quiet, and I remember that he had large hands."

On Lou Gehrig: "I pitched against Gehrig. I knew his doctor--Dr. (Paul) O'Leary at Mayo Clinic--three years before he ever met him. My father was going to the Mayo Clinic for brain cancer treatment and I got to meet all the doctors up there, and Dr. O'Leary was one of them. Dr. O'Leary did not work on my father, though, but I did know him. That was in 1936, and Gehrig got there in May 1939. I pitched to Lou for two-and-a-half years. He was not a great curveball hitter. He was a great fastball hitter, and he was a highball hitter. I threw him a lot of overhand curveballs. He was a very quiet person. I knew his wife Eleanor, too. Of course, I knew Claire Ruth, also. I used to go with the two of them after their husbands had died to different functions, to Babe Ruth League activities usually."