Premature Burial

In Cleveland's Municipal Stadium a fortnight ago, 61,523 fans looked on glumly as Bob Feller got his lumps. The New York Yankees clubbed him for seven runs in the first inning. In the press box somebody cracked that the catcher was throwing the ball back harder than Feller was throwing it in. Was the Cleveland Indians' great pitcher washed up at 30? As he plodded off to the shower, with the Yankees still at bat, Bob Feller was the droop-shouldered picture of discouragement.

Feller (with one victory against six de feats) was not the only Cleveland base-bailer who was having trouble. For a while it seemed that most of the other Indians, spectacular world champions of 1948, were turning up their toes. After they had lost 17 of their first 29 games, the club's publicity-minded president, Bill Veeck, announced that they were going to start the season all over again. There was a mock flag-raising ceremony and the gag snapped some life into the weary Indians. Then the club slumped again; its hitting was sadly off.

Short to Third to First. Player-Manager Lou Boudreau, last year a .355 hitter and the best shortstop in baseball,benched Third Baseman Ken Keltner for a few days and played third himself. The experiment worked; Keltner began hitting again when he came back. Then Boudreau (batting a frail .243) benched Mickey Vernon and moved over to first base. The Indians perked up and won six straight games, including one in which they built up a nine-run cushion for Feller in the first two innings.

Feller himself, a confident, hard-boiled-businessman ballplayer, insisted there was nothing wrong with his arm that time could not cure. He had pulled a shoulder muscle in spring training at Tucson, while demonstrating Cleveland's pickoff play for photographers, and the arm stayed weak. Complete rest might have been the soundest treatment, but the Indians were loth to shelve their high-priced star; Right-Hander Feller took his pitching turn--and his lumps--without complaint.

He could tell warming up before a game how he would do. "If you can snap off your curve so it breads like a ball rolling off a table, then you're strong," he says. The great fireballer had long ago ceased to rely solely on his fast one in a clutch. He had taken a salary cut (from last year's $87,000), because he finished 1948 with only 19 victories. "The way the wolves howled, you might think that was bad," he says, defensively, "and they're howling harder this year. The crapehangers love to bury me. They think I'm making more money than I should be."

Curves & Sliders. In Yankee Stadium this week, with 49,031 pairs of eyes upon him, Rapid Robert's arm felt stronger than it had all season. With a powerful motion, Feller fed the league-leading Yankees his old familiar assortment of stuff--sliders, fastballs, curves and change-ups. The Yankees got only one hit off him after the fourth inning, and Feller was still in there pitching at the end. The Indians won, 4-2, with Feller holding the fort until Teammate Vernon, back at first base, could unload a two-run homer in the eleventh inning. Feller's burial, it seemed, would have to be put off for a while; the rest of the Indians felt healthier, too.

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