Word: feller
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Ewell Blackwell was the National League's strike-out king. He was baseball's top pitcher, with 15 wins, 2 defeats. He had also pitched 1947's first major league no-hitter (TIME, June 30). Already fans were comparing him to the great strikeout artist Bob Feller, who ducked last week's All-Star game because of a back injury (but pitched and won for Cleveland two days later...
Blackwell's fast ball is generally conceded to be slower than the 98.6 m.p.h. pitch that made Feller famous, and his curve doesn't bend so sharply. But he manages to hide the ball more expertly: it comes up at a batsman out of nowhere as "alive" as an eel and just as hard to get hold of. Besides getting extra leverage from his wide sidearm sweep, Blackwell's awkward motion keeps enemy batsmen loose at the plate-just in case one of his pitches gets out of control. The third man to face Blackwell...
Pendrake looked at once puzzled and abashed, and nodded vaguely. "So long, feller. I, umm . . . guess I'll go over to town and try to find some guys...
This week, against Pittsburgh's plummeting Pirates, 26-year-old Pitcher Spahn spun his tenth win, breezing through with six strikeouts. That put him one up on Cincinnati's smart Right-Hander Blackwell, two up on Cleveland's swift Feller, and halfway to every pitcher's goal-a 20-game victory total...
...Like Bob Feller, Warren Spahn learned it from his father: the Spahns worked out on Buffalo's sand lots. He had barely made the Braves in 1942, when the Army took him. He came out of Europe with a wound ("just a scratch on the foot") and a first lieutenancy. Last year, in something more than half the season with the Braves, he won eight and lost five. This year he put together a string of eight wins before his two defeats...