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The King and His Court still tour; they still play the best and win most of the games. Feigner, now 80 and suffering the after effect of a stroke a few years ago still tours and give demonstrations, but no longer plays. His replacement pitcher does most of the tricks that Feigner did (pitching behind the back, from second base, etc.)
I saw him many times and it was always an amazing act. Picture warming up from CF and throwing strikes! Not only was Feigner great, but his teammate were outstanding. I'll always remember a local batter driving a Feigner pitch to the CF fence. The Court's SS took off after the ball, retrieved it and wheeled and threw without looking to a perfectly placed F4 relay who fired a one hop srike to home, retiring the B-R by 10'!
Feigners fastpitch was once clocked at 104 mph. For a real crowd pleaser he would bring out the local team's catcher and throw various speed pitches, announcing the speed of the pitch beforehand. After he had thrown some 70% and 80% pitches, and had the catcher getting very nervous, Feigner would announce his 100% pitch, over 100 mph. He would instruct the catcher to hold his glove way out to the side, claiming that he would never see the pitch. The catcher could hardly hold his glove still he was shaking so much. When Feigner let go of the pitch, the catcher never moved. Didn't see it.
A neat bit of history - in a two-inning exhibition in 1967, he struckout Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Brooks Robinson, Maury Wills, Harmon Killebrew and Roberto Clemente.
Of course he got away with a lot of illegal acts. (Ala the Globe Trotters.) Double windups and throwing behind the back and between the legs really kept the batter's off balance.
I got a chance to meet him once and I was amazed the see that his right arm was double the size of his left arm. By that time he had pitched over 8,000 games (and won 99.99995% of them).
Meadowlark Lemon and Eddie Feigner - two awesome athletes and showmen from another era.
WMB
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