The rawboned kid was 17 and fresh off a Van Meter, Iowa farm when he gangled out to begin his major-league pitching career against the St. Louis Cardinals' Gas House Gang. First man up in the exhibition game in Cleveland was a scrappy shortstop named Leo Durocher. Robert William Andrew Feller took a couple of warmup tosses, then reared back and fired. Leo heard two strikes whistle past so fast that he could not see the ball, then dropped his bat and headed for the dugout. "Hey," the umpire called, "you've got a strike...
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