Bob Feller
Profile
When coming up with a list of greatest athletes to come from Iowa, Bob Feller is always on that short list. Known as the "Heater from Van Meter", Feller was an instant smash in his first start striking out 15 batters. Later that season he struck out 17 batters in one game. After a successful rookie season, Feller returned home to Iowa and finished his senior year. Not college, but high school. Yes, he was a 17 rookie dominating the league.
Feller has the 4th highest WAR* of any Iowan, but is still regarded as the best ever. Why? Well, besides the stat packing that Cap Anson had (27 seasons!), Feller gave up 4 prime years of his career to enlist in the Navy. This selfless act to protect our nation is another proud Iowan tradition**.
Feller is one of 7 MLB HOFs born in Iowa (Anson, Clarke, Faber, Feller, Vance, Bancroft, and J.L. Wilkinson from Algona, founder of the Kansas City Monarchs). Ed Barrow (credited with building the Yankee dynasty) resided in Des Moines is the 8th HOF member with an Iowa connection.
* The top 6 are all HOFs : Cap Anson (Marshalltown, U of Iowa) 94, Fred Clarke (Winterset) 68, Red Faber (Cascade, Loras College) 64, Bob Feller (Van Meter) 63, Dazzy Vance (Orient) 60, Dave Bancroft (Sioux City) 49
** See the Sullivan Brothers (partial inspiration for Saving Private Ryan), Frank Fletcher, Paul Tibbets, Frank Everest, Vernon Baker, and Bud Day for other examples
Personal Notes
My main collection when I was a child was my Kirby Puckett collection. Not Iowa related, but seeing as Iowa has no professional teams and my dad grew up in Minnesota it makes some sense. Puckett retired in 1996 due to an eye condition, and in 1997 he had just a few card options. See, there was a period of time where a player retired, and card companies just stopped making cards of them. Sure, the HOF sets would come around, but nothing to much. If Kent Hrbek retired with 200 cards, you could have a fair assumption that to complete your Hrbek collection, you would need those 200 cards.
Not anymore.
I mention this because now because a Bob Feller collection is in constant flux. By the time his career ended, Feller had about 75 cards. Being a HOFer and an All-Time Great, Feller was included in a bunch of sets after that, but by the 2000s, he totaled around 200 cards. Over 30 years, we are talking 4-5 cards a year. Watch the escalation:
2001: 40
2003: 100+
2004: 250+
2005: ~700
Now to be fair, his yearly numbers sit between 40-150 from then on, but holy moly 2005. These ever changing numbers are one of the biggest influences on how I decide to define what collection is. No longer can you hold onto those childhood hopes of "I'm going to collect EVERY Bob Feller card!" The industry has obliterated that. Now we have to say "I'm going to collect as many Bob Feller cards as I can". What is success in that vain? How can I track progress?
This is the paragraph where I explain my thoroughly thought out process, clear goals, and how I can achieve that goal. But I don't have those. I love stats and I love to track my progress, but I can't define what I'm achieving quite yet. Do I split the collection into Achievable/Too Rare. Perhaps Active/Post Career. Affordable/Too Rich for me? Base Set/Everything else? There is no wrong answers, but I also am slowly learning that there may be no right answers either. Life in the gray zone.
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