Ferebee had solid foundation for success

By Mike London

mlondon@salisburypost.com

MISENHEIMER — Detroit Tigers pitcher/manager Fred Hutchinson was shagging flies and conversing with a buddy in the stands during pregame batting practice at Briggs Stadium when a wicked line drive off the bat of slugger Vic Wertz zinged toward the right-field foul pole.

“Hey, you take this one!” Hutchinson yelled at his friend, and spectator Joe Ferebee took it with no problem.

“Caught that ball bare-handed,” Ferebee said, remembering the moment like it occurred last Tuesday rather than the early 1950s.

Now 91, Ferebee is still tough enough to catch line drives barehanded. His memory remains razor-sharp.

He still has the dry sense of humor he shaped on hundreds of ballfields.After his Albemarle Legion team lost 27-0 to Kannapolis late in the 1957 regular season, he remarked, “We’ve got Kannapolis right where we want them.[0xa0]Their boys are too tired to run the bases.”

His competitive fire is legendary.

When that same Albemarle team tied for fourth and faced a coin flip to determine who had to face regular-season champ Kannapolis in the first round of the playoffs, Ferebee told the official to put his half-dollar back in his pocket. He said Albemarle would be thrilled to play Kannapolis. Then Albemarle beat Kannapolis.

Ferebee moves slowly, but he’s still a walking history book of facts and dates, names and places from the old days. He remembers not just who the pitcher was but what the count was when someone delivered a vital hit.

He can offer play-by-play of 1940s Rose Bowls, if you’ve got time to listen. He recalls minute details of Bob Feller’s first strikeout of Gastonia’s Buddy Lewis, and he likes to tell about the time Cooleemee’s Buck Jordan, pinch hit for Babe Ruth.

Ferebee set a state record by coaching 1,438 baseball wins — including 694 American Legion victories in Rowan and Stanly counties and 677 college wins at Pfeiffer.

He coached four Legion state champions. His 1968 Pfeiffer team was ranked second nationally, and 42 of his players at Pfeiffer went on to sign with pro teams.

He’s in at least eight halls of fame, local ones like Catawba, Pfeiffer, Salisbury-Rowan and Stanly; bigger ones such as NAIA, American Coaches Association, North Carolina and N.C. American Legion.

Baseball success is a part of Ferebee’s story that’s been well-documented. The preparation he had in the military that led to that success is not as well-known.

Ferebee grew up in Mocksville, came to Catawba and stood out in basketball, football and baseball.

Ferebee’s life changed, as it did for all Americans, on Dec. 7, 1941. Pearl Harbor officially brought the U.S. into World War II, and waves of enlistments in the armed forces followed. Major League Baseball pitching hero Bob Feller was one of the first in line.

Ferebee, who was in his final year at Catawba, signed up on Jan. 7, 1942. He was Catawba’s best athlete and top student. He was allowed to take his final exams early that spring, and he left behind one last legacy.

“They let me try my hand at pitching my next to last game, and I shut out Western Carolina,” Ferebee said.

Ferebee produced the boxscore clipping from that game to prove it. Ray Yagiello, who would play both ways for the NFL Los Angeles Rams, had the biggest hit for Catawba. Future St. Louis Cardinal Vern Benson played second base. The date was April 23, 1942.

One week later, Ferebee was in a bunk at Norfolk Naval Training Station.

Ferebee was part of a program headed by Gene Tunney, an ex-Marine who had gone on to win the heavyweight boxing championship. Tunney’s Naval Physical Fitness Program was built on the concept that coaches and athletes were natural leaders.

“They were recruiting men for command jobs who were used to leading,” Ferebee explained. “I’d gone in for a personal interview with Tunney, was accepted and was sworn in. He was a real gentleman.”

Training with Ferebee in Norfolk was an impressive group. Feller was there.

Hutchinson, who had already pitched in the big leagues and would manage the Tigers, St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds after the war, was there.

Baseball games on the base were high level. Hutchinson was the most intense of an intense group. Called out once trying to steal home by a service umpire, Hutchinson went crazy and was ejected.

“The ump wasn’t getting paid, but that’s the kind of competitor Hutch was,” Ferebee said.

How intense was Hutchinson? When Ferebee ran into him in Detroit a decade later, the first words out of Hutchinson’s mouth were, “I was safe at home.”

Ferebee trained with Ace Parker, who had competed in three sports at Duke and had played pro football and baseball before the war.

Washington Redskins coach Ray Flaherty, the inventor of the screen pass, was in Norfolk. Woody Hayes, a high school coach from Ohio, was there. He would coach Ohio State’s football team for 28 seasons.

Edgar “Special Delivery” Jones, a Pitt tailback who had placed seventh in the 1941 Heisman voting was there, and Ferebee’s closest pal was Jim Whatley, an All-America tackle, who had played at Alabama with Bear Bryant and Don Hutson.

All-pros were a dime a dozen in Norfolk,” Ferebee said. “If you weren’t at least Triple A, you didn’t even go out for the baseball team. I’d practice with ’em, but I never got to dress out.”

Feller was determined to stay in shape. He’d pick Ferebee up some mornings, just so Ferebee could hit towering fungoes to him.

“I could hit ’em high, and Bob got a kick out of it,” Ferebee said.

Feller went on to serve 34 months on the battleship USS Alabama as a gunnery captain. After three months of training in Norfolk, Ferebee was assigned to San Diego. He made the cross-country trip in a Chevy Coupe.

“We drove in daytime, wanted to see the country,” Ferebee said. “Crossing hot western Texas, Ferebee was fascinated by the jackrabbits and roadrunners that congregated in the dry streambeds seeking shade.

Ferebee vowed to catch a jackrabbit, and he generally did what he set out to do.

“I zeroed in on a big buck jackrabbit, as big as a hound dog, and I held onto him by the hind legs because I didn’t know if it he’d bite me,” Ferebee. “He just there in the car, with me holding him down,and he traveled 150 miles to Tucson, Arizona, with us. We let him out on the square in Tucson. It was 118 degrees. Last we saw, he was making a right turn and heading back to the desert.”

Things got serious shortly after the jackrabbit incident.

When the Farragut Naval Training Station opened in Idaho at the top of deep Lake Pend Oreillet in the Coeur d’etat Mountains, Ferebee was assigned there. It was a long way from the shooting, but his contribution to the war effort was immense.

Without an assistant, Chief Petty Officer Ferebee trained 160-man companies of sailors.

“Close order drill, life-boat training, fire control, seamanship, signalling, everything they needed to know,” Ferebee said. “They’d train between eight weeks and 12 weeks, depending on how quickly they needed men. When they graduated, I knew all their names. Every one of them.”

There were occasions when Ferebee graduated a company at 5 a.m. and greeted a new group of recruits at 6 p.m. the same day.

In his years in Idaho, he trained at least 2,400 men.

“Never a serious discipline problem in the bunch,” Ferebee said. “We had a lot of guys from California and the Midwest, but I never had one from North Carolina and only one from Virginia.”

Ferebee’s former teammate and cousin, Tom Ferebee, dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. That event hastened the end of World War II and gave millions a chance to return to civilian life .

Armed with the lessons he’d learned, Ferebee started coaching at Salisbury’s Boyden High in 1947 and started producing disciplined championship teams that dressed and played with military precision.

Ferebee would spend 41 years in baseball, finishing his career as a scout.

“The Navy made me a better coach than I ever would’ve been,” Ferebee said. “I’m proud of what I did in baseball. I’m even prouder of my military service.”