Feller worried about future of national pastime

ORONO – Bob Feller is concerned about major league baseball but feels it will recover as long as there isn’t another strike.

The Hall of Fame pitcher, who was 266-162 during his 18-year major league career with the Cleveland Indians, said the affects of the strike are still being felt.

“In towns where they aren’t winning consistently, it has hurt considerably. But it hasn’t hurt Cleveland at all,” said Feller, who is making a promotional appearance for the Bangor Blue Ox at their game against Adirondack 7:30 tonight at Mahaney Diamond.

However, he warned that another strike would cause irreparable damage to the game.

Feller said the strike itself showed that the people involved “don’t know how to negotiate. [Players Union representative Donald] Fehr didn’t want to negotiate. I don’t blame the owners.”

He did say the owners were victimized by the fact the players union “got so strong, so fast” and indicated that the owners could have slowed the union momentum by taking care of the little things like “putting telephones in the clubhouse.”

The lack of pitching has been evident in major league baseball and Feller, who compiled a 3.25 earned run average, said the pitching in the American League is “the worst I’ve seen in my 60 years affiliated with baseball.

“There are no arms. Youngsters don’t play catch any more,” said the 77-year-old Feller. “I drive by these beautiful baseball facilities with freshly cut grass that are ready to go. But there’s nobody on them.”

He said youngsters today have a lot of activities to choose from including “electronic games.”

Feller also said the day of a hard-working farm boy with the live arm has gone by the wayside thanks to machinery that has reduced the amount of physical exertion needed.

“There’s no manual labor any more,” said Feller who grew up on an Iowa farm and was nicknamed “Rapid Robert” for his fastball which was once clocked at 98.6 miles an hour.

According to Feller, the homerfest in major league baseball can be attributed to a more tightly wound baseball, slim-handled bats that hitters can whip through the strike zone and the fact hitters control the plate.

“If you try to pitch inside now, the hitters charge the mound,” said Feller.

He is in favor of interleague play which appears as though it will become a reality in a couple of years.

“We should have done it 40 years ago. But they’ve got to make a decision on the DH,” said Feller. “It doesn’t matter to me which way they go but both leagues should be playing by the same rules.”

Feller, who struck out 2,581 and walked 1,764 in 3,827 innings, considers Ted Williams to be the best lefthanded hitter he faced and Rogers Hornsby to be the top righty.

“Ted never hit a homer off me in ’39, ’40 and ’41 but he hit plenty of them off me after the war,” said Feller, who joined the Navy in 1941 and didn’t return until after World War II in 1945. “The thing that made Ted such a good hitter was he waited on the ball.”

Feller, a six-time 20-game winner, feels pitchers Phil Niekro and Don Sutton, who haven’t been voted into the Hall of Fame as yet, deserve to be enshrined and he said Indians slugger Albert Belle needs to cure his case of “rabbit ears” that has gotten him into trouble.

“He shouldn’t pay attention to the fans [taunting him],” said Feller.