Van Meter, Iowa: Bob Feller's Farm Town

Van Meter, Iowa is a quiet Dallas County farm town with one outsized claim to baseball history. Robert William Andrew Feller was born here on November third, nineteen eighteen, on a family farm a couple of miles northeast of town. His father William was a farmer who happened to be baseball-obsessed, and he spent years playing catch with his son in the field, eventually building a private diamond on the property.

That daily devotion produced one of the most overpowering fastballs in the history of the game. Bob Feller signed with the Cleveland Indians as a teenager and struck out fifteen batters in his first full start at age seventeen. He went on to win two hundred sixty-six major league games, throw three no-hitters, and was elected to the Hall of Fame in nineteen sixty-two.

A museum in Van Meter was dedicated in his honor in nineteen ninety-five. The building now doubles as city hall, with a few display cases still keeping Rapid Robert's memory alive.