Vintage Baseball Glove Forum

Years ago, we were at a shop in Cooperstown, this place had a bin of vintage split finger gloves, I pulled a really dark Bob Feller glove out of the pile.
I didn't have the $100 they were asking for the glove at the time because I was a kid and didn't have the scratch. I don't remember the maker of the glove.
It's stuck with me all these years and I've never seen a version of this glove, most of if not all the Feller gloves I've come across over the years have been either the buckle back version or the J.C. Higgins light tan 1600's coloured variants.

Am I out of my memory here, or does anyone here have an early version of a Feller glove that somewhat matches the dark coloured version I saw back in the day?

I have a mid-40's JC Higgins model that is a split-finger, button-back wrist strap, with three horizontal tunnel web that is a fairly dark brown color. That would fall somewhere in between the earliest Feller gloves with the buckle back and the lighter colored gloves of the 50's with the full web and single finger lace.

Hmmm, do you have any pics of it you could post?
The one I saw back then was pretty darn dark, bordering on black.

No pics on hand, but I'll see if I can get some taken and posted.

Awesome, thanks!

Feller is one of my favourite players. Obviously I never got to see him pitch, but growing up I read a lot about him and between him, and Nolan Ryan, I tried my best to be like both.
My first Feller glove is on the way from Jim and I'm very excited!!

HI JOHN! Glad you're getting your Feller glove. Both Ryan and Feller, unique pitchers of their time. I tried to be like them both too but came up about 40MPH short of the goals.
Both Feller and Ryan endorsement found on many gloves: Feller with Wilson and Higgins and Ryan through Spalding and Rawlings models.

Thanks!
I think many have come up short in trying to be like either of those guys myself included!

It's too bad there weren't radar guns in days of Feller or Johnson, it would be interesting to see just how hard they actually threw.

Dim memory I think tells me that I read that Bob Feller was timed with a primitive military radar device after World War II and came up about 98.8. Eddie Feigner, the fabulous fast-pitch pitcher, I believe, was timed faster than 100MPH. Walter Johnson was quoted as saying that he thought he was a little faster than Feller and Johnson was a fairly humble man. Johnson did say, "nobody throws the ball harder than (Smoky) Joe Wood." Another we may be leaving out is Satchel Paige, Feller's contemporary, who many claim, in Satchel's younger days, was as "rapid" as Robert Feller.
Wilson produced many Bob Feller gloves and he was their poster boy in the late 1940s, early 1950s, also putting his name on many J. C. Higgins (Sears) gloves. Interestingly, both Hall of Famers Nolan Ryan and Tom Seaver, who began their careers with the Mets, were on Spalding gloves early in their careers and both switched to Rawlings endorsements.

Interesting, I'd never read that about Feller being timed. I vaguely recall reading that a stop watch of sorts was used for timing his pitch.
98 with a vintage radar device sounds pretty darn fast.
I really love Walter Johnson too. Humble and blazingly fast.

Joe Wood rose and fell really quickly too, kind of like Kerry Wood.

The fastest speed clocked just recently was Aroldis Chapman at 105mph, which is insanely fast and considering he threw over 20 pitches that inning and every one of them was over 100mph. But I would have thought that we would have reached speeds faster than that by now.

I have only seen a few Wilson Feller gloves, the majority I've seen are J.C. Higgins.
I don't collect modern gloves, but I've often considered picking up a nice Ryan glove to use for catch.

Man I love Ryan's pitching style. Wild yes, and if he had converted half of his walks into K's...I truly believe he is in the top 5 pitchers of all time, and personally think he is the greatest of all time. But that's my bias for strikeout pitchers speaking up. Your job is to make sure the batter DOESN'T hit the ball and the fielders are only there if you make a mistake

My wife and I have settled on Nolan as a boy's name when we have kids, I vied for Nolan with Ryan as a middle name but she vetoed that as being "too much pressure" for the boy
And yes, I chose Nolan after you know who.

A quick web search will yield lots of "definitive," but different, answers to the question of "What was the fastest pitch ever? Here are three of them I think are interesting:

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/article ... ball.shtml

http://www.efastball.com/baseball/stats ... r-leagues/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMPxpOapRuU

Great links!
I'd not seen any Feller footage on YouTube, great stuff.
That's pretty interesting regarding Nolan's 100.9 adjusted to 107-109mph pitch!
You get a nice shot of Feller's glove here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXkrHS_fQl0

One always wants to have a little "rise" or "hop" to his fastball. The straight ones eventually get straightened out by the good hitters. I have a magazine cover of Feller with what looks like a shoe brush going after his glove.
The Feller endorsed Wilson retail gloves I found in the glove finder are: #136, A2940, #900, #902, #904. But far more Higgins have been found.
The adjusted speeds from film are very interesting. I had no idea Mathewson was that fast or ever heard it discussed. Grove I had heard about and wonder about Score and Koufax as fast lefty speeds.
Funny story about El Roy Face (of Fork Ball Fame) and retaining his "fast ball" when he was in his late 60s. An old timer came up to him in a signing show and said, "El Roy, I bet you can still throw
the fast ball like you did with the Pirates." Face replied, "I cannot even roll the ball across the floor."
For me, all I want to do is throw my age in MPH (71) like the golfers who want to shoot a round at their age.

Your fastball certainly needs life to it. Mine used to trail because I threw a 2 seam fastball, and if I needed some pinpoint work I went to the 4 seam fastball.
Billy Kotch, formerly of the Jays, had a flat fastball that guys would TATOO, even though he threw in the upper 90's, into the 100's.

I didn't realize Mathewson was that fast either, even though I have read about his strikeout prowess.


71 is still a respectable speed!

My brother hit the low 90's, I danced in and about the mid 80's.
I never worked out back then, I often wonder how much harder I could throw with a little more work put into it.