High Heat by Tim Wendel

Of course, this was well before pitch counts and preordained days of rest. The Senators’ manager liked how worked up his young starter was and let him have another go. This time Johnson won in another shutout, 6–0.
    While that should have been the end of the story, the next day Johnson got talking with several of his veteran teammates in the hotel lobby. They teased that the newspaper writer still didn’t think much of him. Johnson, not realizing that they were egging him on, asked Cantillon if he could pitch again against the Yankees in the doubleheader slated for Labor Day Monday. (Sunday was an off day.) Johnson started the first game and pitched his third shutout in four days.
    After a disappointing third season, in which his fastball seemed to lose velocity, Johnson bounced back to lead the league for the first time in ERA (1.39) while posting a 33–12 record. From then on Johnson was a force to forever be reckoned with, leading the league in strikeouts 9 of 10 seasons, starting in 1910, and in victories 5 of 6 seasons, from 1913 to 1918. In addition, he pitched 56 shutout innings from April 10 to May 14, 1913, and three years later he pitched 369 ⅔ innings without allowing a home run.
    Numbers in baseball give a degree creditability to what we’ve actually witnessed. Most fans know that the Triple Crown goes to the hitter who leads the league in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in in the same season. After the earned run average, or ERA, became an official statistic in 1912 in the National League and a year later in the American League, a similar high standard was available for pitchers.
    â€œEarned run average can be analogous to batting average, since it is not affected too much by what teammates do,” Leonard Koppett wrote in the Sporting News . “Won-lost percentage is like runs batted in, to the extent that it will reflect membership on a stronger team. And strikeouts are like home runs, in that they are an entirely individual feat.”

    In 1913, Johnson was the first to win pitching’s equivalent of the Triple Crown, posting a 36–7 record, a minuscule 1.14 ERA, and 243 strikeouts.
    Not only were the statistics there, but the personal testimonies and tall tales that began to surround Johnson were pretty amazing, too. The Cleveland Indians once loaded the bases on him with none out in the first inning. Johnson proceeded to strike out Tris Speaker, Chick Gandil, and Braggo Roth on ten pitches. Only Roth was able to even foul one off.
    Another time the Detroit Tigers loaded the bases on Johnson thanks to three Senators errors.
    â€œDon’t worry, Big Fella,” called out one of Johnson’s infielders.
    â€œI’m not worrying,” he replied. “Just give me the ball and I’ll get the next three guys.”
    Johnson did just that, striking out Cobb, Germany Schaefer, and Claude Rossman.
    That he did all this with meager support borders upon the unbelievable. In the first five years Johnson was with the Senators, the ballclub never finished above seventh place. Still, the hard thrower managed to win 82 games.
    With such accomplishments came the nicknames. He was called “the Big Swede,” even though he had little Scandinavian ancestry, and “Barney,” a play on Barney Oldfield, a top-notch auto driver of the time. But it was left to Grantland Rice to come up with the best moniker for the right-handed fireballer. He dubbed Johnson “the Big Train” after the fastest means of travel at the time.
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    B orn on November 3, 1918, in Van Meter, Iowa, Bob Feller heard many of the stories about the Big Train growing up. And the more he heard, the more Feller couldn’t help thinking that the two of them had more in common than a blazing fastball. After all, they were both country boys, for the most part. Johnson grew up on the Kansas prairie, with the finishing touches in southern California. Feller was another