Lou Gehrig

Baseball Player

• Born: June 19, 1903
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: June 2, 1941
• Place of death: New York, New York

American baseball player

Gehrig was the bulwark of the New York Yankees baseball dynasty of the 1920’s, including the famed Murderer’s Row team of 1927. He played in 2,130 consecutive major league games, an endurance record unsurpassed until 1995.

Area of achievement Sports

Early Life

Lou Gehrig (GEHR-ihg) was born in New York’s upper East Side. His parents, Heinrich and Christina Gehrig, were German immigrants whose two other children died at a very young age. They spoke no English on their arrival in New York, and their lives were filled with deprivation and poverty. Lou’s father was never able to work consistently at his craft and often drank beer and played pinochle at the neighborhood tavern. Lou’s mother was the dominating force of his life. She worked at many jobs, such as domestic, cook, and laundress, and Lou often helped and ran her errands. Christina Gehrig’s driving ambition was to provide Lou with an education so that he might become an engineer and escape the cycle of poverty that had engulfed her and her husband.

As he grew up on the East Side, Lou was a profoundly shy “momma’s boy.” He wore hand-me-down clothes and spoke with a German accent, leading his peers to taunt him. This formative period of his life left him with a lack of self-confidence that he would never overcome completely. His mother, however, emphasized the idea that hard work and dedication to his studies were keys to success in America. Lou was so proud of his perfect attendance record in elementary school that he would not allow pneumonia to keep him out of school.

Gehrig was a good and attentive student, but he excelled in sports. His father once gave him a right-handed catcher’s mitt for Christmas. Although he was a southpaw, Gehrig was very proud of the glove and played ball with neighborhood children. He was big and awkward, not a natural-born baseball player. Yet his father helped him to build up his physique and muscle coordination, and Gehrig became very active in school sports, particularly track, shot put, and baseball. His proudest moment occurred when he helped his team win New York’s Park Department League baseball championship.

At the High School of Commerce, and despite his mother’s fears that sports would distract her son from his studies, Gehrig became the star of the school’s basketball, soccer, and baseball teams. Commerce’s soccer team, for example, won the city’s championship three consecutive years. Gehrig played first base for the baseball team and became the team’s leading slugger. During his senior year, the baseball team won the city’s championship, which entitled them to play Lane High School, the champions of Chicago. Gehrig hit a grand-slam home run to help his team emerge victorious.

Gehrig’s baseball exploits at Commerce enabled him to enter Columbia University in 1921 on an athletic scholarship. His parents were employed at a fraternity house, and Gehrig helped out by waiting on tables. When he had some spare time, he played baseball with members of the fraternity. He inadvertently jeopardized his scholarship, however, when he signed a contract with the New York Giants under manager John McGraw, who sent him to Hartford, Connecticut, in the Eastern League. When Gehrig’s professional contract became known, Columbia University officials attempted to strip him of his amateur status. Friends intervened on behalf of Gehrig, however, and his amateur ranking was restored on the condition that he sit out his freshman year.

Life’s Work

By this time, Gehrig was six feet tall with massive shoulders and weighed two hundred pounds. He played fullback on Columbia’s football team and pitched and played first base on the baseball team. He was called “Columbia Lou” as his hitting exploits received increasing attention from fans. During the spring of 1923, Paul Krichell, a scout for the New York Yankees, was so impressed with Gehrig’s hitting that he predicted that he would become another Babe Ruth. Gehrig was offered a bonus and a contract to complete the 1923 season with the Yankees. The money was so good that even his mother approved of his withdrawal from Columbia. Thus, at the age of twenty, Gehrig began his professional baseball career.

During the early 1920’s, Yankee manager Miller Huggins sought to build a nucleus for a baseball dynasty. Babe Ruth was the heart of the team, and Gehrig found it difficult to find a place for himself. First base was Gehrig’s position, but veteran Wally Pipp was at the height of his career and had a lock on it. Accordingly, Gehrig spent most of the 1923 and 1924 seasons in Hartford, where he hit well over .300 and drove out sixty-one home runs over two years.

In 1925, Gehrig’s break finally came. On June 1, 1925, he pinch-hit for the shortstop. On June 2, 1925, Pipp was hit in the head by a fastball during batting practice and was unable to start the game. Huggins inserted Gehrig into the starting lineup, and Pipp never played first base for the Yankees again. Gehrig started every game for fourteen years, a total of 2,130 consecutive games. He became the Iron Horse of the New York Yankees.

Gehrig enjoyed a solid rookie year. He hit .295, with twenty home runs, twenty-three doubles, nine triples, and sixty-eight runs-batted-in (RBI’s), for a seventh-place team. In 1926, the Yankees won the American League pennant, and Gehrig proved to be a major factor in that season with a .313 average, 107 RBI’s, and twenty triples. Gehrig hit cleanup, between Ruth and outfielder Bob Musil. In 1927, that trio formed part of Murderer’s Row, perhaps the greatest baseball team in history. The team’s statistics were awesome: a 110-44 won-lost record, a .307 team batting average, and an earned run average of 3.20.

What also caught the fans’ imagination were the exploits of Ruth and Gehrig. For good or ill, Ruth was the dominant personality on the team. In many ways, he was an oversized boy who challenged authority to its limits. Gehrig, in contrast, was the organization man, obedient, quiet, noncontroversial, and hardworking. Gehrig’s quiet, passive personality may explain his inability to escape Ruth’s shadow fully. In 1927, Gehrig hit .373 and Ruth .356; Gehrig led the league with 175 RBI’s, and Ruth came in second. Yet Ruth led Gehrig in slugging percentage; in the most spectacular race of all, he and Gehrig were neck and neck for the home-run title. Finally, in the last weeks of the season, Ruth pulled ahead to hit sixty home runs, a record that was to last until Roger Maris of the Yankees hit sixty-one in 162 games in 1961. Few people recall that Gehrig finished second with forty-seven home runs.

During the early 1930’s, the Yankees were once again in the process of reconstructing their team under manager Joe McCarthy. Ruth was desperately unhappy under McCarthy’s discipline, and age began to blunt his skills. By 1935, Ruth was gone, traded to the Boston Braves. Gehrig thrived under McCarthy and, at last, emerged from Ruth’s shadow. Moreover, he became more independent of his mother when he married Eleanor Twichell of Chicago late in December, 1933. Eleanor Gehrig provided her husband with a happy and contented home life. The results were obvious: In 1934, Gehrig had his best year, winning baseball’s coveted Triple Crown: forty-nine home runs, 165 RBI’s, and a .363 batting average.

Gehrig’s days in the Yankee sun, however, were few. In 1935, his performance did not match that of 1934. In 1936, the Yankees acquired center fielder Joe DiMaggio from the Pacific Coast League, and DiMaggio would dominate the team through the 1940’s. Even so, 1936 was one of Gehrig’s best years, as he hit .354 and led the league in home runs (forty-nine). He came through again in 1937, with 159 RBI’s, thirty-seven home runs, and a .351 average. The following year, however, was extremely disappointing. Only thirty-four years old, he appeared to be on the decline, although his .295 batting average and 114 RBI’s were quite respectable. His defensive play at first base was below his usual standards; he played in constant pain, pain so severe that he had to leave games in the late innings. Gehrig suspected that he had lumbago, but his doctors diagnosed the problem as a gallbladder condition. He was treated on that basis during the winter months.

The 1939 spring training season in St. Petersburg, Florida, revealed that Gehrig was very ill. His muscle coordination had deteriorated over the winter. During the early part of the regular season, Gehrig had only four hits in twenty-eight times at bat for a .143 average. Finally, in Detroit in early May, he requested that McCarthy take him out of the lineup, thus terminating his legendary consecutive-game streak. Gehrig later flew to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where doctors diagnosed his condition as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, an incurable and deadly form of paralysis. At the insistence of his wife, Eleanor, doctors did not inform Gehrig of the implications of his disease.

Gehrig ultimately returned to the Yankees as a coach for the remainder of the 1939 season. On July 4, 1939, the team held a Lou Gehrig day in Yankee Stadium, and more than sixty thousand fans came out to honor the Iron Horse. Gehrig was deeply moved by the fans’ display of affection and respect; in a moving and heartfelt speech, he declared that he was “the luckiest man on the face of this earth.” Eleanor made the last days of Gehrig’s life as useful and happy as possible. She arranged to have New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia appoint Gehrig as a member of the parole board. They attended as many cultural events as they could. Finally, on June 2, 1941, Gehrig died at home, quietly, at ten o’clock in the evening, only two weeks short of his thirty-eighth birthday.

Significance

Gehrig played in 2,164 major league games, of which 2,136 were at first base, nine in the outfield, and one at shortstop. He had 8,001 official at bats and collected 2,721 hits, including 525 doubles, 162 triples, and 493 home runs. He hit a home run every 6.2 times at bat. His lifetime batting average was .340. He scored 1,888 runs, batted in 1,191 runs, struck out 789 times, and walked to first base 1,528 times. His lifetime slugging percentage was .632. In World Series play, his record was equally impressive. Gehrig played in thirty-four World Series games; in 119 at bats, he had forty-three hits, of which eight were doubles, three were triples, and ten were home runs. He scored thirty runs and knocked in thirty-five runs against the best teams that the National League had to offer. His career World Series batting average was .361, and his slugging percentage, .731.

For all their impressive effect, these statistics do not reveal Gehrig the human being. He represented the American dream to hard-pressed citizens of the late 1920’s and 1930’s. He was an inspiring role model for American youth in a way that Babe Ruth could never have been. He represented basic American values that were the bedrock of the baseball mystique: honor, sportsmanship, duty, and work. However, Gehrig fulfilled this role without visible effort. It was as much a part of his character and personality as were the grace and dignity of his play in a child’s game. He never complained that life had been unfair to him. The courage and humility of his last days were so inspiring that amyotrophic lateral sclerosis became popularly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. In 1939, the Baseball Writers Association of America did him honor by waiving the required waiting period to vote Gehrig into baseball’s Hall of Fame.

Further Reading

Allen, Mel, and Ed Fitzgerald. You Can’t Beat the Hours: A Long, Loving Look at Big League Baseball, Including Some Yankees I Have Known. New York: Harper & Row, 1964. A general and popular account of the New York Yankees by their radio broadcaster of a quarter of a century. Covers the team from the era of Ruth and Gehrig to the era of Mantle and Maris. A very readable and entertaining book.

Anderson, Dave, Murray Chass, Robert Creamer, and Harold Rosenthal. The Yankees: The Four Fabulous Eras of Baseball’s Most Famous Team. New York: Random House, 1979. A fascinating account of the Yankee dynasties from the perspectives of the dominating players of each era. Many photographs.

Eig, Jonathan. Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005. A balanced and interesting profile of Gehrig, including information about his relationships with his family, wife, and Babe Ruth.

Fleming, G. H., ed. Murderer’s Row. New York: William Morrow, 1985. A collection of photographs, newspaper clippings, and articles by the major sportswriters of the 1920’s, linked by Fleming’s commentary to form a day-by-day narrative of the 1927 season. A major theme is the home-run duel between Ruth and Gehrig.

Gehrig, Eleanor, and Joseph Durso. My Luke and I. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976. A moving, personal account of the public and private lives of Lou and Eleanor Gehrig. Particularly revealing are insights into Gehrig’s personality, the rivalry between Gehrig’s mother and his wife for his affections, and the stability of Gehrig’s life following his marriage.

Kashatus, William C. Lou Gehrig: A Biography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004. This biography of Gehrig also focuses on his wife, Eleanor, who devoted her life to finding a cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Rubin, Robert. Lou Gehrig: Courageous Star. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979. An admiring popular biography of the Iron Horse. Written by a Miami newspaper sportswriter. Emphasizes the impact of Gehrig’s formative years and his struggle to emerge from the shadow of Babe Ruth, only to be overshadowed by the young Joe DiMaggio.

Sultans of Swat: The Four Great Sluggers of the New York Yankees. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006. Using sports reporting from The New York Times, the book re-creates the careers of Gehrig, DiMaggio, Ruth, and Mantle.