Bob Feller started his baseball career as a 17-year-old for the Cleveland Indians in 1936. He also served in the Navy aboard the USS Alabama.
When discussions come up about who throws the fastest pitch, most are centered around today’s modern player and in my opinion rightfully so. But the history of baseball is as important as today’s game and flame throwers that came before should always be a part of any topic concerning fastballs. Those like Bob Feller, Walter Johnson, Nolan Ryan, Bob Gibson, and even Steve Dalkowski, who never pitched in a major league game. Judgment on who had the fastest pitch is skewed for those who didn’t pitch in the era of the radar gun.
The modern radar gun for baseball can be attributed to Danny Litwhiler, then a coach at Michigan State in 1973. One day he saw the campus police using radar for speeding cars and thought he could use the equipment as a teaching tool. Not one to measure how fast someone threw but the difference between their fastballs and changeups.
The JUGS company made pitching machines so Danny bought one of the MSU police’s radar guns and sent it to John Paulson of the company to try and adapt it for baseball. The radar gun JUGS came up with is on display at the Hall of Fame. After a series of events, one where Danny went to spring training to show it off, now you see them everywhere.
In Bob Feller’s time, these were not available. Now I may be missing a piece of the information but I have to wonder if they just did the math, speed = distance/time, that they would come up with a speed that encompasses the entire 60.6 feet, from mound to plate. Might not be the top velocity of the pitch. Anyway, as then as it is now, publicly promotes sales.
Here is when one day Bob Feller pitched against a motorcycle. Searching YouTube, articles, and references, the accounts of the stunt, the calculated speed, and the number of times the stunt occurred seem to vary. But the jest was that on a closed street, a police officer riding a Harley would speed past Feller at roughly 80MPH. At that moment, or as close as Bob could, he would pitch the ball toward a paper target. Naturally, the baseball broke the plain before the Harley. I’ve read speeds from mid-90s to well over a hundred miles an hour.
I’m not sure how players from different eras can compare and in some sports, they cannot. But baseball seems to be the one sport you can.
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