"One Win"

I watched an episode of Inside Studio 42 With Bob Costas in December 2009 where he interviewed 90 year-old Baseball Hall of Famer Bob Feller, and I just loved this line, so I thought I'd share it on this special day.

Feller was a monster pitcher.  Costas said he was a legend before the age of 20-- and if Costas says something like that about a baseball player, you know it's true.  He had amazing numbers.  One such number was his win total: 266 games.  But in the middle of his career, he missed three full seasons and most of a fourth by serving in the Navy in World War II.

Costas said to him, "At the pace you were at, you would have easily surpassed 350 wins had you not been in the war."

Feller responded with, "I only wanted one win. World War II was the one we had to win."  He then went on to talk about his personal as well as the nation's "unrelenting resolve" to win the war, and rattled off the death tolls of some of the battles he was in (note, the fact that he knows those numbers after 60 years is remarkable in and of itself, and tells of the passion he has for the subject). 

He finished with, "I'm not a hero of the war.  Heroes seldom return from a war. Survivors return from wars.  I'm proud of my miltary career, and I don't miss those hundred wins whatsoever.  We're a free country, and that's what it was all about."

Were the men and women who lived during the 1940s the "greatest generation"?  Yeah, no doubt.

Take a little time to think of where we're at in the country we live in because of our veterans. Those who fought in World War II, as well as those who served before and after because, as Feller said-- and bears repeating: "We're a free country, and that's what it's about."

Thanks to all the veterans-- as well as those serving now.