The End for No. 19

The rawboned kid was 17 and fresh off a Van Meter, Iowa farm when he gangled out to begin his major-league pitching career against the St. Louis Cardinals' Gas House Gang. First man up in the exhibition game in Cleveland was a scrappy shortstop named Leo Durocher. Robert William Andrew Feller took a couple of warmup tosses, then reared back and fired. Leo heard two strikes whistle past so fast that he could not see the ball, then dropped his bat and headed for the dugout. "Hey," the umpire called, "you've got a strike left." "You can have it," Durocher replied, and kept on walking.

In three innings, that July night in 1936, righthanded Bob Feller faced nine Cardinals and struck out eight. He had as much control, one sportswriter reported, as a drunken swallow--one wild pitch shattered a grandstand chair. But the Cleveland Indians knew they had a natural. In August of that year Feller made his first official start. He fanned 15 St. Louis Browns, just one short of Rube Waddell's record for a single game.

All the Records. From that day on Bob Feller never stopped breaking records. In 1937 he tied Waddell's mark by striking out 16 Red Sox; in 1938 he fanned 18 Tigers for a new major-league record. His 1-to-0 victory over the White Sox in 1940 is the only opening-game no-hitter on record. He pitched two more no-hitters--against the Yanks in 1946 and the Tigers in 1951. In 1946 he struck out 348 batters, smashing Waddell's 42-year-old record of 343.

Just two days after Pearl Harbor, Feller joined the Navy, lost nearly four years of his career. Returning to Cleveland in 1945, he was wise enough to know that it was time to substitute control, sharp-breaking curves and sneaky sliders for his fading speed, and he worked incessantly to stay in shape. Through it all he wore the relaxed and happy look of a man who likes his work, and for whom the great game was indeed a great game.

Still a Giant. Off the field the friendly, homespun ex-plowboy showed a financial sagacity rare among ballplayers. He earned up to $80,000 a year from the Indians, and on the side coined money from half a dozen other business ventures, even had himself incorporated (Ro-Fel Inc.) in the state of Ohio. He also slipped gracefully into the role of solid citizen, last year headed Ohio's polio-fund drive.

Last season, 37 and no longer able to earn a regular starting assignment, Bob Feller had a piddling 0-4 record (in 1946 he won 26). Rather than slip slowly into mediocrity, the man who for so long had been the best decided to make a clean break from baseball. Last week Bob Feller turned down an offer of a front-office job with the Indians and hung up his uniform for good (his No. 19 will be retired from use). From now on he will be a part-time insurance broker, a radio and television executive, and a full-time fan.

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