The Best IA Baseball Players Since Bob Feller
If you list it, they will comment
When thinking about baseball in Iowa, two things quickly come time mind: Bob Feller and Field of Dreams. As a podcast which has prided itself on exploring the untold stories of sports in Iowa, we wanted to do a deep dive on the best baseball players in Iowa since the Heater from Van Meter. This week, Tim goes into the bullpen to call up brother Neil to talk about the best Iowa baseball players of the last 70 years. Each was allowed to conduct their respective research and then draft a team consisting of 5 pitchers, 2 relievers, and 1 man at each position. Building on the legacy of our Top 100 Iowa Athletes, Tim and Neil go full Billy Beane in creating the absolute best lineups full of Hawkeye state products since the 1950s. The guys bring the topic full circle by analyzing their lineups and then wrap the episode talking about what’s next for current and future Iowa pros and prospects.
For a state of only about 3 million people, Iowa has a rich history of professional ball players. As one might expect of such a rural state, many of the players making the list are from small towns like Lost Nation (population 400) and Lacona (population 350). There are plenty of names from the Des Moines metro, Quad Cities, and other cities, but even diehard baseball fans might need to pull up the Google machine to learn about the players Tim and Neil are drafting into their line ups.
Iowa has a few homegrown Hall of Farmers, but none in the second half of the 20th century. Cap Anson, Fred Clark, Red Faber, Dave Bancroft, and Bob Feller are the class of Iowa all timers, but since Feller retired, there hasn’t been an Iowa Hall of Fame baseball player. For this episode, Tim and Neil are looking at guys who grew up in Iowa and went to high school here. Guys like Jerry Hairston, Jr. who were born in Iowa but moved away aren’t going to make the cut this week. These lineups will be filled out by guys who made Iowa their home and really got their start here.
The leaders for most of the statistical categories are from Bob Feller’s era and before. But in the last few decades, guys like Joel Hanrahan and Casey Blake have had successful MLB careers. It is hard to imagine another talent like Bob Feller but there are plenty of talented ball players on Iowa diamonds.
“This isn’t your office fantasy baseball draft.”
Some of the top picks, like Mike Boddicker and Jeremy Hellickson, are well known Iowa major leaguers. Once our GMs get through their first few picks though, they had to do some deep dives as they scoured the state for talent to fill out their lineups. Some of the everyday players only had 20 major league games or less. The guys had to shuffle some talent around and make some adjustments to fill their lineups. Baseball historians will walk away from this game learning a thing or two about the long history of Iowa major leaguers.
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