So I was on my way home from Judy’s book launch Sunday, and talking to my attorney/good friend/book collector/avid reader, Don Witter, and for some reason he starts on a story about Bob Feller. Now Cleveland people know Bob Feller. I know C.R. was well aware of him and I’m certain Casey and Zorro have a spot in their heart for the man. Apparently Bob, former…( long time ago former) star pitcher for the Indians, is still alive and kicking in Cleveland at the age of 86.

It reminded me of my stint with the National Enquirer. In one twelve month period back in the late seventies, I covered five different stories for the tabloid. I’ll get into them at some later date, but the Bob Feller story made me a believer in the NE. They called me and said that Feller had stolen an airplane. Pretty big claim. You can see that headline on their front page, right?

CLEVELAND INDIANS SUPER STAR STEALS AIRPLANE

Could sell some papers. They asked me if I would drive to Cleveland and do some research. No Google back then. No computers at all. So I jumped in the car and drove to Cleveland. I went to the Plain Dealer ( newspaper) and they allowed me to do a complete search on all of their stories regarding the ace pitcher. (Morgue Mamma) Feller had a checkered past, dealing with all sorts of problems. Then I did a library search. Then a search at yet another paper. When I had all the facts, I called the Enquirer. ( Fax machines were not up to speed yet, so I overnighted the information). The NE called me the next day and said they needed two more sources. TWO MORE?

My editor said “We can’t afford to make mistakes!”

So, I found two people I could interview. Bottom line was, I can not remember the outcome. It seems to me that there was a question whether Feller had partial ownership in the plane…but I can remember visiting five, count ‘em five different sources to back up the story.

The National Enquirer doesn’t run a story unless they are 99% sure they’ve got the facts. The John Edwards story is a good example. So many people thought they’d gotten that one wrong, but they’d done the homework. While I don’t defend tabloid journalism and I understand that headlines can be somewhat misleading, the meat of the story is almost always factual. And the facts are checked again and again and again. And again and again.

And as a finale Bob Feller story…in 1948 The Indians played the Yankees in New York. The stadium was 25 years old, and they honored Babe Ruth who was dying of throat cancer. Ruth was to walk out to the field and whisper a few words, and he was unsteady as he came out of the dugout. He grabbed Bob Feller’s bat and used it as a cane to get to the pitcher’s mound. And now the last game has been played in the House That Ruth Built. Everything must come to an end.