Bob Feller is fighting leukemia at the age of 91. He will always be one of Cleveland's greatest sports legends.
Bob Feller has spent much of his life acknowledging the cheers of baseball fans in general and Indians fans in particular. That isn't likely to change even with his diagnosis of leukemia, says Bill Livingston.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Two years ago, the Indians threw a party in honor of Bob Feller's 90th birthday. The morning was bright and unseasonably warm. If you looked out the sun-filled windows of the Progressive Field restaurant where it was held, you could see rows of trees, their golden leaves unshed in early November.
The Browns were kicking off a few blocks away a couple of hours later. It was the last, deflating season of coach Romeo Crennel. Progressive Field had been silent in October 2008. After almost reaching the World Series in 2007, the Tribe had fallen with a thud the next year. Much the same had happened with the Browns, who had won 10 games in 2007.
On the distant horizon was the free agency of the Cavaliers' LeBron James. This spring and summer, we found out what his commitment to the city amounted to.
Feller, however, was always around. He dropped by spring training. He was a key attraction in the Indians' fantasy camp because, in all of baseball history, only Walter "Big Train" Johnson and Nolan Ryan had fastballs that rivaled Feller's. He showed up in the press box to watch the new kids play. A statue of Feller stood outside the park, but Feller himself, garrulous and assertive, was available in the third row of the press box in real life many nights.
Feller and Jim Brown are Cleveland's living representatives in sports legend. Sometimes, Brown has been around town, usually when he is paid to be, and sometimes, he is not. Currently, he is not.
But Feller? Why, he would wave you over to his table in the dining room before a game to deliver a comment that was certain to be provocative and unconventional.
He is rounding the bend and closing in on 92 now, and Sunday he revealed that he is fighting leukemia. He still hasn't lost anything off the fastball that gave him the nickname "Rapid" Robert. I've never had a conversation with him I didn't enjoy. I've had many in which I learned something.
The most memorable exchange came during the 1995 season.
"I'm afraid we have a few sluggers who are pretty easy to strike out," Feller said.
"Who would that be?" I said.
"Albert Belle, Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez," Feller said, as my eyes widened.
"How would you pitch to them, Bob?" I asked.
"Bust a fastball under their chin, then a slider on the outside corner," Feller said.
"Piece of cake," his tone said.
I awoke the next day to find that callers to the talk shows felt Feller and I were giving inside information to the enemy.
Of course, "busting a fastball under the chin" will get a pitcher warned or ejected these days. And if anyone can consistently hit the outside corner with a slider, well, their names would have been Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine of the Atlanta Braves, at least if National League umpires were behind the plate.
The outcry was amusing because Feller has always been chief among Indians partisans.
In the 1995 World Series, the decorous quiet, fastidiously observed by the deep thinkers and tormented artists in the press box, was disrupted by a burst of cheering in the front row one night. No one said a word about Feller's whoop of glee as the Indians took the lead. We all knew that, if anybody on earth was entitled to cheer for those longtime sad sacks, the Indians, it was Feller.
By 2007, eyeing with severe disapproval the Yankees cap LeBron James wore during the New York-Cleveland playoff series, Feller said he was going to wear a cap of the Detroit Pistons, the Cavaliers' arch-rivals at the time, to a Cavs game and sit behind the home bench. He was almost 89. Even then, I would have advised James not to dig in too deeply at the plate against him.
Some thought Feller ungracious when he said of Washington phenom Stephen Strasburg, after he handcuffed the Indians this year, "Check back with me when he's won a hundred games." But the ligament-transplant surgery Strasburg faces now simply shows that the remark was Feller's longer view of the kid as a baseball man.
Feller would have gotten to 300 wins -- piece of cake -- except he enlisted in the Navy, two days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He saw combat in the North Atlantic and the Pacific. He lost 3 1/2 years out of the prime of his career.
Getting to 100 years? A whole city will be rooting for him. He's Cleveland's own, our piece of forever.