Ron DeSantis invokes Bob Feller in Iowa campaign pitch

Ron DeSantis is calling to the bullpen for illustrations of what his presidential campaign means.

During a campaign stop in Ankeny, Iowa, the Republican presidential candidate invoked former hurler Bob Feller, who just happened to be from the Hawkeye State.

At a tour stop sponsored by the DeSantis-aligned Never Back Down super PAC, the Florida Governor (and former amateur baseball player himself) recalled his chance meeting with the former pitcher as a youth.

“I must have been maybe 10 years old. My dad came to me and he said, hey, you know, there’s a guy signing autographs, a famous baseball player at the local Firestone tire place,” DeSantis recalled.

“And so I went as a kid and … paid like 10 bucks to get the autograph. It was like a picture of him and he signed it to me,” DeSantis said.

The Governor noted that “one of the things that Bob Feller did when World War 2 happened, he was just, he was in like the prime of his pitching career.”

“And yet he goes into the service as soon as Pearl Harbor happened, he raised his hand,” DeSantis noted, even though he could have just kept “playing sports as entertainment for all the other service members.”

“Bob Feller would not do that. He’s like, ‘I’m going to combat, you put me in combat.’ And so he was doing machine guns on Navy ships in the Pacific and doing all that. And I thought about that.”

“I’m like, you know, this is a guy that did not have to be in that situation. He could have had it much easier. So he’s not only a great baseball player, but really an American hero. And that I think exemplifies that generation when freedom was under attack around the world, they stood up and they fought and they saved this world for us and for other countries.”

Feller, born in 1918, missed three full seasons and much of the 1945 season due to his war service. He pitched from 1936 to 1956, winning over 200 games.

DeSantis, though he never played professionally, was in the Little League World Series as a youth. He also played varsity ball for Yale University.