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makes the motorcycle test even more incongruous and precious when seen in the rearview mirror of today. Here’s a window to a world before the Best Generation was tested by Pearl Harbor and Hitler. Feller’s boyish face could be from any era. He smiles sheepishly as the cameras begin to roll. He knows he has the world on a string and has arrived at that station in life when participating in such a jerry-rigged experiment, the morning of a game in Chicago, somehow made complete sense.
    â€œIt was kind of a cute idea,” Feller says. “I suppose I wanted to know as badly as everybody else how hard I could throw a baseball. Since I’d been a little guy, I’d heard people talking about how I was the next Lefty Grove or Walter Johnson.
    â€œYou look back at it now and ask yourself, ‘What the heck were you doing?’ But I knew I could throw the ball with the best of them. Deep down if somebody asks you to try and prove it, you step right up and give it a shot. No questions asked—you know what I mean?”
    Seconds after the motorcycle flew past, Feller flung the regulationsize hardball. The ball quickly outraced man and machine, ahead by a good three feet when it split the paper bull’s-eye target that was held upright by a wooden frame. Alongside Feller’s target was another 10-foot-high target that the motorcycle sped toward. More importantly for the matters of science, Feller’s speed ball hit the 12-inch-diameter dark bull’s-eye in the center of the heavy paper.
    â€œTo this day I still don’t know how I hit that target on the first try,” Feller tells the growing audience at Jacobs Field. “It was the luckiest thing I’ve ever done.”
    â€œAs lucky as pitching a no-hitter on Opening Day?” somebody sings out.
    â€œHey, don’t be getting silly on me,” Feller snaps back. “But afterward I told those guys doing this test, ‘Give me another fifty chances
and there’s no way I can duplicate that.’ I don’t know if they believed me or thought I was just blowing smoke.”
    Seconds after Feller’s offering broke the paper target, the motorcycle obliterated its target and Fonseca had satisfied enough variables to calculate the speed of the pitch. Soon afterward, MLB announced that Feller’s fastball had been clocked going 104.5 miles per hour. Feller’s throw gained 13 feet on the motorcycle over the 60 feet, 6 inches. So, with the motorcycle traveling at 86 milers per hour the calculation goes as follows: 86 divided by 60.5 equals 1.42. Now, add in the 13 feet plus 60.5. That equals 73.5. Multiply it by the previously calculated 1.42 and you have nearly 104.5 miles per hour.
    That sounds pretty definitive and it certainly ranks Feller among the fastest pitchers ever in the game. But does that really make him the fastest of all time? Even Feller, a guy who isn’t afraid to speak his mind or polish his accolades, isn’t so sure. “I know it puts me in the ballpark,” he says. “I know there’s no arguing with that. But I’m also not foolish enough to think that’s the end of the story.”
    Indeed, we’re just getting started.
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    T wo weeks before Christmas in 2008, I’m driving from Washington, D.C., just ahead of the worst ice storm to hit the Northeast in years. Climbing into the mountains north of Harrisburg, through the freeway roller-coaster ride leading into Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, the weather changes from freezing rain to sleet mixed with snow. The early-morning forecast back home in Washington called for a few inches of snow, which I’m somewhat prepared for. A shovel lies in the rear cargo compartment. But a wintry mix, of course, can be an entirely different story.
    Exiting Interstate 88, between Binghamton and Albany, I drive as fast as I dare along Route 28 toward the Village of Cooperstown. The new world economy hasn’t treated