September 13, 1936: At 17, Bob Feller fans 17 A’s batters for new American League strikeout record

Cleveland in the summer of 1936 was a city of spectacles. First came the Republican National Convention, then the Great Lakes Exposition, gatherings that drew thousands. Equally if not more compelling for local baseball fans was the jaw-dropping emergence of Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller.1

It all started when the 17-year-old Feller, fresh off his junior year of high school in Van Meter, Iowa, fanned eight St. Louis Cardinals over three innings in a July 6 exhibition game. That performance, against a lineup filled with Cardinals regulars, opened the eyes of St. Louis ace Dizzy Dean as he prepared to take the mound for the National League in the next day’s All-Star Game: “That kid’s a natural. He’s got everything. He can’t miss.”2

Feller made his major-league debut with Cleveland two weeks later, having never thrown a pitch in the minor leagues. After six relief assignments, the right-hander won his first start, on August 23, using a “terrific fast ball” and “sharp-breaking curve” to strike out 15 St. Louis Browns, one shy of Rube Waddell’s American League single-game record.3 Four starts later, in the opener of a September 13 twin bill at Cleveland’s League Park, Feller fanned 17 Philadelphia A’s, eclipsing Waddell’s 28-year-old mark and tying Dean’s three-year-old AL/NL record.

In second place on the day of Feller’s first start, Cleveland had fallen to fifth by the time Connie Mack’s last-place A’s came into town for what was supposed to be a two-day series in mid-September. With the pennant race over (the New York Yankees had clinched it with a win over Cleveland a few days earlier), the Indians moved up by a day the game scheduled for Monday, September 14. The unexpected doubleheader provided a welcome distraction for many a Clevelander. News of what came to be known as the “Cleveland torso murders” filled Saturday’s front pages, with city Safety Director Eliot Ness of FBI fame taking charge of the investigation to find a killer responsible for at least seven gruesome murders, with one victim discovered just days earlier.4

A paltry Sunday crowd of 6,500 was on hand at League Park, a number kept down by the combination of “gloomy skies,” a lackluster opponent, and the economic realities of the Depression.5 Those who braved the morning’s intermittent showers had every reason to expect Feller to put on a show.6  Jangled during road losses in Boston and New York, where he lasted just six innings combined, he was more relaxed pitching at home; six days earlier he’d fanned 10 in a complete game win over the Browns. It also helped that sitting in the stands along the first-base line was Feller’s family; his sister, Marguerite; mother, Lena; and father, William, all of whom were seeing him pitch in an Indians uniform for the first time.7

Feller walked the first batter he faced, Lou Finney, then struck out the A’s top hitter, Wally Moses, swinging, and Chubby Dean (no relation to Dizzy) looking. Finney stole second with cleanup batter Bob Johnson at the plate but was left stranded after Johnson looked strike three into the mitt of catcher Charles “Greek” George.8 Behind the plate for Feller’s 15-strikeout gem four weeks earlier in what was his second major-league start, George had caught every Feller start since.

The opposition had scored first in all four of Feller’s previous starts, but not this time. The Indians scratched out two runs in the bottom of the first off 18-year-old rookie Randy Gumpert, who came into the game 1-1 with a 4.64 ERA in 20 appearances.9 A walk to Roy Hughes, a single to left by Bill Knickerbocker, and a line-drive out to right by four-time All-Star Earl Averill brought the first run across. Moved to third on a Hal Trosky single, Knickerbocker scored when Feller’s roommate, 21-year-old Roy Weatherly, grounded into a force out at second.10

Feller’s second inning started much like his first. He walked two-time All-Star Pinky Higgins, then struck out rookie Hugh Luby. Twenty-one-year-old Rusty Peters, another first-year ballplayer who later spent part of six seasons with Cleveland, followed by popping out. Higgins swiped second with Frankie Hayes batting, but the A’s backstop became Feller’s fifth strikeout victim.

Spotty control cost Feller the lead in the third. One-out walks to Finney and then Moses, after Finney had swiped his second base of the game, put two A’s runners on. Dean singled, scoring Finney and moving Moses to third. Taking advantage of Cleveland’s inexperienced battery, the pair pulled off a double steal, evening the score at 2-2. Johnson and Higgins waved at third strikes to give Feller seven strikeouts after three innings.

Cleveland climbed back on top in the third without recording a hit. With one out, Gumpert, the second-youngest American or National Leaguer after Feller, walked Knickerbocker and Averill. He retired Trosky on a grounder to his counterpart Dean at first base, then induced Weatherly to bounce one to Peters at shortstop. The youngster’s errant throw allowed both baserunners to score, giving Feller a lead that he never relinquished.

Feller retired the A’s in order in the fourth for his first one-two-three inning, the only one in which he didn’t record a strikeout. He fanned two batters before walking Moses in the fifth, then three in a row after walking Higgins to lead off the sixth. Higgins swiped second base after the second punchout but advanced no farther. Feller’s inning-ending whiff of Hayes gave him 12 for the game and 22 in his last two games, breaking the franchise record of 21 punchouts in consecutive games, set by side-armer Earl Moore in 1903.

With two out in the seventh, Philadelphia reached Feller for its second and final hit of the game, a single by Moses. A walk to Dean and a wild pitch put two in scoring position, but Feller stood firm, retiring Johnson on a fly out to left fielder Jeff Heath, a recent call-up from the Zanesville Grays who was making his major-league debut.11

The Indians stretched their lead to three runs in the bottom of the seventh. Hughes doubled to left leading off, moved to third on a sacrifice, and came home when Averill collected his major-league-leading 214th hit of the season, a double to the right-center-field gap.12

With the cheers of the crowd growing louder each passing inning, Feller started off the eighth by notching strikeout number 15, getting Higgins looking. The next batter, Luby, went down swinging. With four outs still to go, Feller had tied the AL record of 16 strikeouts in a nine-inning game, set by the Browns’ Waddell, on July 29, 1908, also against the A’s.

As he’d done in the second, fourth, and sixth innings, Feller made Cleveland’s final out in the bottom of the eighth. Gumpert’s only strikeout victim of the game, he fanned for the second time.

Feller retired Hayes on a lineout to left field starting the ninth, then surrendered his ninth walk of the game to Charlie Moss, pinch-hitting for Gumpert. The next batter, George Puccinelli, worked a full count, prompting George to pay his pitcher a visit. Feller told his backstop that Puccinelli would be looking for a fastball, then dropped a curveball over the heart of the plate for strike three.13 Moss took second on the pitch for the A’s seventh steal of the game, but Feller had 17 strikeouts, surpassing Waddell and tying Dean’s AL/NL record, set on July 30, 1933.14

Still needing one out for a win, Feller hit the next batter, Moses, bringing Philadelphia’s Dean to the plate as the tying run. He grounded weakly to Trosky, who stepped on first, giving Feller his third career victory.

“The new strike-out king of the American League is Bob Feller, a 17-year-old … with a dimple in his chin and a 12-inch shell in his right arm,” declared Cleveland Press sports editor Ed Bang, writing for The Sporting News.15 “An electrifying performance that defies description,” wrote Alex Zirin in the Plain Dealer.16 The Philadelphia Inquirer, which titled its next-day box score “Quite a Feller,” credited the “tall, loose-jointed boy hurler” with “exhibit[ing] the courage of a veteran in the tight spots.”17

Asked how he felt breaking Waddell’s record, a modest Feller replied, “What are you going to do if you pitch the ball and they can’t hit it?”18

Feller finished the season 5-3, with a 3.34 ERA and 76 strikeouts in 62 innings, then returned home to complete his senior year at Van Meter High. No longer eligible to play for the school’s baseball team, he studied physics, English literature, and American history and government.19

In his 1947 autobiography, Strikeout Story, Feller reflected on this game. “In one sense, I was as good that day as I ever could be,” he recalled, but “in another, however, I must have been a pathetic sight for those people who paid their money to see a professionally smooth performance. I reared back like a frightened horse with every pitch, trying for the utmost in speed and break. The result was a box score which must be among the most weird pitching records ever made.”20

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Ray Danner and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Bob Feller, SABR-Rucker Archive.

Sources 

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted C. Paul Rogers III’s SABR biography of Bob Feller, Bill Johnson’s SABR biography of League Park, and the Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and Stathead.com websites, including box scores and play-by-play at these links: 

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CLE/CLE193609131.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1936/B09131CLE1936.htm

Notes

1 Another extravaganza in which Clevelanders also took delight that summer were the Games of the XI Olympiad (aka the Summer Olympics), held in Berlin, where former Cleveland high-schooler Jesse Owens won four Gold Medals in track and field.

2 “Schoolboy Who Fanned 8 Redbirds Hailed as a New Walter Johnson,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 7, 1936: 14; “Schoolboy Feller Whiffs 15 Browns in First Start,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 24, 1936: 14. A New York Daily News sportswriter claimed at the time that Dean called Feller the “[g]reatest pitcher I’ve ever seen” after watching the youngster pitch a spring exhibition, but it was probably the July 6 exhibition where Dean first saw Feller pitch. A sore arm kept Feller out of action all spring. He first pitched in competition on June 27, going five innings for a Cleveland semipro team, the Rosenblums. Jimmy Powers, “The Powerhouse,” New York Daily News, August 25, 1936: 44; “Feller Stars in Debut With Rosenblums,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 28, 1936: 3-B.

3 “His Smoke Leaves Whiffs,” The Sporting News, September 10, 1936: 1; “17-Year-Old Iowa Farm Boy Fans 15 in Big League Debut,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, August 24, 1936: 21.

4 “The Torso Killer: Cleveland’s Lingering Mystery,” Cleveland Public Library, October 17, 2025, https://cpl.org/the-torso-killer-clevelands-lingering-mystery/; “Clean Out Haunts of Mad Killer,” Cleveland Press, September 12, 1936: 1; “Urges $1,000 Torso Murder Reward,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 12, 1936: 1. As of December 2025, the killer of a dozen or more men between 1934 and 1938 had yet to be found.

5 Zirin, “Feller Fans 17 For New A.L. Record.”

6 “Cleveland Weather Report,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 14, 1936: 10.

7 Ed McAuley, “Young Feller, Who Assaults Old Records, Called Fastest Pitcher Since Walter Johnson,” The Sporting News, September 24, 1936: 3; Alex Zirin, “Feller Fans 17 For New A.L. Record,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 14, 1936: 1. The family missed attending Feller’s first start because they were in Des Moines, Iowa, where William was undergoing a tonsillectomy. “Schoolboy Feller Whiffs 15 Browns in First Start.”

8 This was the first of 30 times that Feller fanned Johnson, third-most of any batter he faced in his 18-year career. Among the more than 100 batters that Feller faced 50 times or more, nobody struck out more frequently than Johnson did – 34 percent of the time.

9 Gumpert was familiar to Cleveland batters; he had faced Cleveland twice before, including in his major-league debut three months earlier, when he pitched the final inning of a 19-1 shellacking administered by the Indians.

10 “Schoolboy Feller Whiffs 15 Browns in First Start.” Installed as the everyday right fielder after his promotion from New Orleans of the Southern League in late June, Weatherly entered the game hitting .353, second on the team to Averill.

11 “Pennant Third in Four Seasons for Local Team,” Zanesville (Ohio) Times Recorder, September 12, 1936: 6.

12 Averill finished the season with a major-league-leading 232 hits, one shy of Shoeless Joe Jackson’s club record.

13 Bob Feller, Strikeout Story (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1947), 50; Stuart Bell, “Feller Explains His Record Strikeout Creed,” Cleveland Press, September 14, 1936: 18. 

14 The A’s seven steals were their most since a July 1930 bludgeoning of the Indians in which they pulled off a pair of triple steals. Feller’s 17 strikeouts also gave Cleveland catcher Charles George a share of the AL record for the most putouts in a nine-inning game, a mark he had set during Feller’s previous start. “Charley George Ties His Putout Record,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 14, 1936: 14.

15 Ed Bang, “Young Feller Sets Forest City on Fire,” The Sporting News, September 17, 1936: 1.

16 “Feller Fans 17 For New A.L. Record.”

17 “Rookie Feller Whiffs 17 A’s; Tribe Snares 2,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 14, 1936: 17.

18 Bell, “Feller Explains His Record Strikeout Creed.”

19 “Feller Helps Former Teammates,” Des Moines Tribune, October 10, 1936: 1.

20 Feller, Strikeout Story, 49.