Specs

These new glasses of mine are a wonder.  They let me read the box scores in-depth, and then some.  Yesterday, I was going through the erstwhile tiny type of This Date in Baseball to see that on September 13, 1936, 17-year old Bob Feller of the Indians—and I’d love to see Terry Francona try to bring in a reliever with that man pitching—struck out 17 Philadelphia A’s to set an AL record.  Feller was that good.

I met him once, at a book signing in the spring of 1990.  I was pretty much on assignment, for Luke Appling, of all people.  I’d met Appling at a memorabilia show the previous autumn in downstate Illinois.  For some reason, no one else was there, and the White Sox HOFer wanted to talk.  The conversation—more of a monologue, really—eventually turned to the Opening Day 1940 no-hitter Feller threw against the Sox at Comiskey Park.  Only Old Aches and Pains said it wasn’t so, that he hit a ball fair down the third-base line that the ump mistakenly called foul.  “Go ahead, ask him,” Appling said of Feller.  “He’ll tell you.”

No, he wouldn’t.  When I mentioned it, all Feller would say was, “Tell him [Appling] not to hit the ball so close to the foul line.”  Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.  Rapid Robert did allow that Luscious Luke was a pretty good hitter.  High praise, indeed, from the Pride of Van Meter, Iowa.