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So Young, So Great: Bob Feller Electrifies Baseball and America
When Bob Feller hit the Major League Baseball scene, he instantly became one of the most famous athletes in the country. Everything Feller did made headlines, primarily because anything he did had never been done before, especially by someone his age. To this day, Feller is still the first pitcher to have signed his first professional contract and played in the Major League while still in high school. By the age of seventeen he had set an American League record for most strikeouts in a game, and by nineteen, he had broken his own Major League strikeout record.
So Young, So Great covers the first six years of Feller’s career, from 1936 to 1941, from his discovery in the small town of Van Meter, Iowa, as a high school junior, to his immediate entry into the Major Leagues with no minor league detours, the extensive media coverage of his every move and his box office appeal to fans, and his record-breaking feats up to his enlistment into World War II at age twenty-two.
Before signing a contract with the Cleveland Indians, Feller was a prospect of such magnitude that Major League scouts were fighting in hotel lobbies to get to Feller, still a minor, to sign a Major League contract. His high school graduation was broadcast nationally on radio. And when he had to have his wisdom teeth removed, a photographer and reporter were in the room to document it.
By focusing on the first six years of Feller’s career, So Young, So Great captures in revelatory detail Feller’s unprecedented arrival, as a high school teenager, on the Big League stage, and his rapid ascension into one of the game’s all-time greats.
So Young, So Great covers the first six years of Feller’s career, from 1936 to 1941, from his discovery in the small town of Van Meter, Iowa, as a high school junior, to his immediate entry into the Major Leagues with no minor league detours, the extensive media coverage of his every move and his box office appeal to fans, and his record-breaking feats up to his enlistment into World War II at age twenty-two.
Before signing a contract with the Cleveland Indians, Feller was a prospect of such magnitude that Major League scouts were fighting in hotel lobbies to get to Feller, still a minor, to sign a Major League contract. His high school graduation was broadcast nationally on radio. And when he had to have his wisdom teeth removed, a photographer and reporter were in the room to document it.
By focusing on the first six years of Feller’s career, So Young, So Great captures in revelatory detail Feller’s unprecedented arrival, as a high school teenager, on the Big League stage, and his rapid ascension into one of the game’s all-time greats.
- GenresBaseball
280 pages, Hardcover
Published June 1, 2026
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 1, 2026
Very few, if any, other baseball players have taken Major League Baseball by storm as a teenager the way Bob Feller did when he first appeared in a game for the Cleveland Indians in 1936 at the tender age of 17. That is the premise of this book by Jim Ingraham about the first six years of the Hall of Fame pitcher’s career.
This cannot really be labeled as a biography as Ingraham does not write very much about Feller’s youth or his family. At least not in the way many sports biographies are written in which there are several pages about the subject’s parents, grandparents and siblings. Instead, after a brief description of his baseball success in rural Iowa, it jumps straight into the day when Indians scout (and later Vice President) Cy Slapnicka approached Feller and his father and told them he would be in Des Moines watching Bobby pitch his game that day. Afterward, Feller was under contract (signed by his father since he was still a minor) and property of the Fargo-Moorhead Twins, a farm club of the Indians.
From there, it was a whirlwind of moves, protests by other clubs and some fancy paperwork by Slapnicka that resulted in Feller making his debut in 1936. And what a debut that was, as Feller struck out 15 St. Louis Browns on his way to a 4-1 victory. Ingraham does a good job of recapping this game and showering praise on Feller.
This was a good preview of what the rest of the book would be like as in each chapter, each successive season, Feller became the best pitcher in baseball as shown by either the traditional statistics used at the time or the advanced metrics favored by baseball analysts today. The writing about his pitching was good, the coverage of what other players thought about his was better and Ingraham’s musings about the use of Feller in those first six years so that attendance would be better for both the Indians and other American League teams was great. On that latter part, Feller was often called a “cash cow” in the book since average attendance at games he would pitch would be nearly triple that of all the other games at all American League cities, including Cleveland.
Other aspects of Feller’s life away from baseball during this time frame, even if they are only mentioned briefly, make the book feel like a more complete description of his life during this time frame. Of course, his decision to enlist in the Navy instead of waiting to be drafted soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor is a major decision in his life. As was the death of his father and the resignation of Slapnicka from the Indians, all around the same time.
It was notable that other major parts of his life, such as his wedding to his wife Virginia, didn’t get as much notice in the book as did other events that were covered by the press – events that would otherwise not even be mentioned. These are events that many young men would have, but because this was Bob Feller, the best pitcher in baseball, the press covered them. These included his high school graduation and when he had his wisdom teeth removed.
There is quite a bit of repetition in the book, of which the most noteworthy is the frequent mention of the title – so young, so great. That is understandable, especially when one considers how much Feller accomplished before the age of 23. But for other aspects, such as the recollections of how Slapnicka found Feller, they don’t feel like they are part of the story. However, this does not detract from the excellent writing about the accomplishments of a pitcher at such a young age.
Looking at this part of Bob Feller’s career is a very good choice to give a reader an excellent look into his baseball life. If you want to understand why Bob Feller became a Hall of Famer before he became an adult, this focused look at his early career makes the case as well as anyone ever has.
I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book. The opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own.
https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...
This cannot really be labeled as a biography as Ingraham does not write very much about Feller’s youth or his family. At least not in the way many sports biographies are written in which there are several pages about the subject’s parents, grandparents and siblings. Instead, after a brief description of his baseball success in rural Iowa, it jumps straight into the day when Indians scout (and later Vice President) Cy Slapnicka approached Feller and his father and told them he would be in Des Moines watching Bobby pitch his game that day. Afterward, Feller was under contract (signed by his father since he was still a minor) and property of the Fargo-Moorhead Twins, a farm club of the Indians.
From there, it was a whirlwind of moves, protests by other clubs and some fancy paperwork by Slapnicka that resulted in Feller making his debut in 1936. And what a debut that was, as Feller struck out 15 St. Louis Browns on his way to a 4-1 victory. Ingraham does a good job of recapping this game and showering praise on Feller.
This was a good preview of what the rest of the book would be like as in each chapter, each successive season, Feller became the best pitcher in baseball as shown by either the traditional statistics used at the time or the advanced metrics favored by baseball analysts today. The writing about his pitching was good, the coverage of what other players thought about his was better and Ingraham’s musings about the use of Feller in those first six years so that attendance would be better for both the Indians and other American League teams was great. On that latter part, Feller was often called a “cash cow” in the book since average attendance at games he would pitch would be nearly triple that of all the other games at all American League cities, including Cleveland.
Other aspects of Feller’s life away from baseball during this time frame, even if they are only mentioned briefly, make the book feel like a more complete description of his life during this time frame. Of course, his decision to enlist in the Navy instead of waiting to be drafted soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor is a major decision in his life. As was the death of his father and the resignation of Slapnicka from the Indians, all around the same time.
It was notable that other major parts of his life, such as his wedding to his wife Virginia, didn’t get as much notice in the book as did other events that were covered by the press – events that would otherwise not even be mentioned. These are events that many young men would have, but because this was Bob Feller, the best pitcher in baseball, the press covered them. These included his high school graduation and when he had his wisdom teeth removed.
There is quite a bit of repetition in the book, of which the most noteworthy is the frequent mention of the title – so young, so great. That is understandable, especially when one considers how much Feller accomplished before the age of 23. But for other aspects, such as the recollections of how Slapnicka found Feller, they don’t feel like they are part of the story. However, this does not detract from the excellent writing about the accomplishments of a pitcher at such a young age.
Looking at this part of Bob Feller’s career is a very good choice to give a reader an excellent look into his baseball life. If you want to understand why Bob Feller became a Hall of Famer before he became an adult, this focused look at his early career makes the case as well as anyone ever has.
I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book. The opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own.
https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...
Displaying 1 of 1 review