A dominating pitcher and, by all accounts, a great guy. You have to admire those to served their country in the prime of their sporting careers.
He was Nolan Ryan before Nolan Ryan was even born, except that Feller was better.
He was a good Feller.
We’ve lost the greatest pitcher from the Greatest Generation.
They were comparing him to Nolan Ryan this morning on Sports Center, which I assumed was because he could throw 100mph and racked up lots of K’s and even had 3 no-hitters and something like 13 one-hitters. But, Ryan’s curveball was almost as devastating as his fastball. Did Feller have a secondary pitch?
Yes he had a wicked curve.
<slightly off topic> With the death of “Rapid Robert”, it leaves Stan “the Man” Musial as the greatest living ballplayer from the “Greatest Generation”.
Had Feller not lost four seasons smack-dab out of the prime of his career (age 23-26), nobody would even be thinking about mentioning Nolan Ryan in the same sentence. It’s a stretch even without that: Feller was a pitcher who won games; Ryan just threw a bunch of strikeouts.
Gotta wonder how many of the vets thought of those years away from the game as “lost”. Maybe the many players who got assigned to military barnstorming teams, sent from base to base to play exhibition games, might. Those like Feller, who was a gunner on the USS Alabama, or Warren Spahn, who survived the Bulge, or Ted Williams, who went back for more in Korea as a fighter pilot, I don’t think would typically use that word.
Feller himself acknowledged that he might have gotten injured, too, pitching for these three and a half seasons, so temper your certainty that the only outcome possible was that he would have won a shitload of more games.
In studying the effect of durable pitchers, it’s often the case that they were for some reason or other spared a heavy load in their younger years–Ryan had control problems and was relegated to middle inning work for a few years with the Mets, Feller and Spahn “took off” time to fight WWII in their early twenties, Palmer had some disabling injuring that put him on the shelf for a while when he was young, and it’s possible that such light loads helped them enduring into their late thirties or early forties.
I live in Akron OH. so I’m possibly attuned to Feller more than many.
I bought a baseball card deal from some kids in 1984. There was a local baseball card show on Sunday here and a buddy had a table. He told me I could buy half his table for $10. I did and sold about $50 worth of cards.
But, the interesting thing was that Feller was signing autographs in the corner. The promoter of the show(and this wasn’t a big show) brought him in and he was signing for free. I think they bought him breakfast and lunch for doing this. Maybe slipped him $25-50 bucks. He just did this because he liked it.
Old joke up here in the BBcard biz—“What’s rarer than a baseball signed by Bob Feller?”
Answer–
One he didn’t sign. 
Certainly that’s possible. You may perhaps note that I make it clear that Feller was better than Ryan regardless.
Often the case? No one else you mention compares with Feller. Ryan wasn’t a good pitcher; Spahn had one year in the majors, with a record of 0-0, before WWII took him out; Palmer broke in at age 20, and missed one season at age 22.
Such durable pitchers as Walter Johnson, Gaylord Perry, and Greg Maddux didn’t get any rest periods in their early 20s. Your point is pointless.
Sorry for the one-up, but he was my next door neighbor in Cleveland when I was a kid-my dad brought me over once to meet him, but I wasn’t into baseball at all at that age, and I’ll be damned but I can’t remember meeting him. 
I do recall sneaking across his lawn a few times tho, but he never came out and shook his fist at me.
Actually, Perry pitched very little in 1963 at the age of 24, mostly long relief for SF (76 IP) and nine innings for Tacoma. I didn’t check your other examples for light loads, but my point is that OFTEN (not always–please re-read those three words if you’re tempted to chirp up again) durable pitchers have had a season when young that strained their arms very little.
Gosh, I guess I’ve been put in my place.
OK, so now the definition of being spared a heavy workload is down to one season of only 85 innings. Thanks for the clarification.
And you know, Feller wasn’t a pitcher with an especially long-lived career. His last good season was at age 32, and he retired five years later. That’s not durable. Perhaps we’re using two different definitions.
But he was, after the 1941 season, an established star–in his prime at an age when other pitchers are just getting started–with 107 major league victories, and he picked up right where he left off. There is no reason not to expect similar success during his missing seasons.
I’m fairly certain you’re just disagreeing for the sake of being disagreeable.
Actually, looking at baseball-refernce, his 3rd to last season (and the onebefore) were quite good.
No, he’s right-check the first full seasons of all 300 game winners, and you’ll find that a lot of them started relatively late. Even if you expanded it to 200 game winners, you’ll likely find the same thing-it’s virtually impossible to miss that pitchers with longevity more or less avoided high workloads in their early 20’s. Graph career wins thru various ages, and the guys who win the “marathon” are not going to be the initial front-runners. For all post-WWII 300 game winners, first full ML season of 200 or more innings:
Warren Spahn 26
Greg Maddux 22
Roger Clemens 23
Steve Carlton 23
Nolan Ryan 25
Don Sutton 21
Phil Niekro 28
Gaylord Perry 25
Tom Seaver 22
Tom Glavine 24
Randy Johnson 26
Early Wynn 23
Sutton is the youngest on this list, but he only ramped it up close to 300 innings a few years after his debut.
As a point of comparison, here’s the first full seasons (450 PA) of the top 12 postwar career home run leaders:
Henry Aaron 21
Willie Mays 20
Barry Bonds 21
Ken Griffey 19
A-Rod 20
Sammy Sosa 21
Jim Thome 24 (Indians yanked him around for several years)
Mark McGwire 23
Frank Robinson 20
Harmon Killebrew 23
Rafael Palmiero 23
Reggie Jackson 22
Maddux is an odd case, in that he often had complete games with very low pitch counts, even in his first good year with the Cubs (I scored one once off of WGN in 1988 as a 79-pitch effort). Nolan Ryan makes for a good example, as his control was so rotten with the Mets that they didn’t give him a huge number of innings, thus keeping his arm from being overworked before he was fully mature. Can’t really say anything about what Feller may or may not have done absent the war; there’s an anecdote that he hurt his arm in a fall on the mound in 1947. The data shows a marked dropoff in K rate, from 8.4 in 1946 to 5.9 the next year.
Bob Feller richly deserved all the praise heaped on him. An outstanding pitcher and a great human being. May he rest in peace.
Working on it.
Is that supposed to be sarcasm? Is 85 innings a heavy load? That’s about 14 innings per month. Did you suppose I was discussing pitchers who were cryogenicaly frozen for a season?
Yes–I’m using a definition that says that a pitcher who makes it to 3800 innings and age 37 in the rotation is “durable” and you’re using one that says that such a pitcher is a creampuff.
No, I’m disagreeing because you’re spewing nonsense, and hoping that some of it will seem sensible if you’re belligerant enough.