Lou Gehrig
Henry Louis Gehrig was an American professional baseball first baseman who played 17 seasons in Major League Baseball for the New York Yankees. Gehrig was renowned for his prowess as a hitter and for his durability, which earned him the nickname "the Iron Horse", and he is regarded as one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Gehrig was an All-Star seven consecutive times, a Triple Crown winner once, an American League Most Valuable Player twice and a member of six World Series champion teams. He had a career.340 batting average,.632 slugging average, and a.447 on-base average. He hit 493 home runs and had 1,995 runs batted in. He is also one of 21 players to hit four home runs in a single game. In 1939, Gehrig was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame and was the first MLB player to have his uniform number retired by a team when his number 4 was retired by the Yankees.
A native of New York City and a student at Columbia University, Gehrig signed with the Yankees on April 29, 1923. He set several major-league records during his career, including the most career grand slams and most consecutive games played, a record that stood for 56 years and was considered unbreakable until Cal Ripken Jr. surpassed it in 1995. Gehrig's consecutive game streak ended on May 2, 1939, when he voluntarily took himself out of the lineup, stunning both players and fans, after his performance in the field had become hampered by an undiagnosed ailment; it was subsequently confirmed to be amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, an incurable neuromuscular illness that since then is sometimes referred to as "Lou Gehrig's disease" in the United States.
Gehrig never played again and retired in 1939 at age 36. Two weeks later, the ball club held a Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day on July 4, 1939, at the close of which he delivered his speech declaring himself the "luckiest man on the face of the earth" at Yankee Stadium. Two years later, Gehrig died of complications from ALS. In 1969, the Baseball Writers' Association of America voted Gehrig the greatest first baseman of all time, and he was the leading vote-getter on the MLB All-Century Team, chosen by fans in 1999. A monument in Gehrig's honor, originally dedicated by the Yankees in 1941, prominently features in Monument Park at the new Yankee Stadium. The Lou Gehrig Memorial Award is given annually to the MLB player who best exhibits Gehrig's integrity and character.
Early life
Gehrig was born June 19, 1903, at 1994 Second Avenue in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York City; he weighed almost at birth. He was the second of four children of German immigrants Anna Christina Foch and Heinrich Wilhelm Gehrig. Gehrig's father was a sheet-metal worker by trade who was frequently unemployed due to alcoholism and epilepsy, and his mother, a maid, was the main breadwinner and disciplinarian in their family.Gehrig's mother Christina was born in 1881 in Wilster, Schleswig-Holstein, a province of pre-World War I Germany near the Danish border. She emigrated to the United States in 1899. His father Heinrich was born in 1867 in Adelsheim, Baden, and came to the U.S. in October 1888. Heinrich originally spent some time in Chicago, but later settled in New York, where he met Christina, who was 14 years his junior. Both parents were Lutheran. They married in 1900.
Gehrig was the only one of the four siblings to live past childhood. His two sisters died at early ages from whooping cough and measles; a brother also died in infancy. From a young age, Gehrig helped his mother with work, doing tasks such as folding laundry and picking up supplies from local stores. Gehrig spoke German during his childhood, not learning English until the age of five. In 1910, he lived with his parents at 2266 Amsterdam Avenue in Washington Heights. Ten years later, the family resided at 2079 8th Avenue in Manhattan. He was known as "Lou" so he would not be confused with his namesake father, who was known as Henry.
Gehrig attended PS 132 in Washington Heights, then went to Commerce High School, graduating in 1921. He first garnered national attention for his baseball ability while playing in a game at Cubs Park in Chicago on June 26, 1920. His Commerce High School team was playing a local team from Lane Tech High School in front of a crowd of more than 10,000 spectators. With his team leading 8–6 in the top of the ninth inning, Gehrig hit a grand slam completely out of the major league park, which was an unheard-of feat for a 17-year-old.
College career
Gehrig studied engineering at Columbia University for two years. Finding the schoolwork difficult, he left Columbia to pursue a career in professional baseball. Gehrig had been recruited to play football at the school, earning a scholarship there, later joining the baseball team.Before his first semester began, New York Giants manager John McGraw advised Gehrig to play summer professional baseball under an assumed name, Henry Lewis, despite the fact that it could jeopardize his collegiate sports eligibility. After he played 12 games for the Hartford Senators in the Eastern League, he was discovered and banned from collegiate sports his freshman year. In 1922, Gehrig returned to collegiate sports as a fullback for the Columbia Lions football team. Later, in 1923, he played first base and pitched for the Columbia baseball team. At Columbia, he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity.
On April 18, 1923, the same day the original Yankee Stadium opened for the first time and Babe Ruth inaugurated the new season with a home run against the Boston Red Sox, Columbia pitcher Gehrig struck out 17 Williams Ephs batters to set a team record, though Columbia lost the game. Only a handful of collegians were at Columbia's South Field that day, but more significant was the presence of New York Yankees scout Paul Krichell, who had been trailing Gehrig for some time. Gehrig's pitching did not particularly impress him; rather, it was Gehrig's powerful left-handed hitting. Krichell observed Gehrig hit some of the longest home runs ever seen on various eastern campuses, including a home run on April 28 at South Field, which landed at 116th Street and Broadway. Scouts saw Gehrig as "the next Babe Ruth."
Professional career
Minor leagues
Gehrig signed a contract with the Yankees on April 30. Gehrig returned to the minor league Hartford Senators to play parts of two seasons, 1923 and 1924, batting.344 and hitting 61 home runs in 193 games. Except for his games at Hartford, a two-hour car ride away, Gehrig played his entire baseball life—sandlot, high school, college, and professional—with teams based in New York City.New York Yankees (1923–1939)
1923–1932
Gehrig joined the New York Yankees midway through the 1923 season and made his major-league debut as a pinch hitter at age 19 on June 15, 1923. In his first two seasons, Gehrig was mired behind Yankee stalwart Wally Pipp at first base, a two-time American League home run champion and one of the premier power hitters in Major League Baseball's "dead-ball era." Gehrig saw limited playing time, mostly as a pinch hitter, playing in only 23 games and being left off the Yankees' 1923 World Series roster in spite of producing both years. On June 1, 1925, the slumping Pipp took himself out of the day's lineup with complaints of a headache and was replaced by Gehrig. Pipp would never get his job with the team back, while Gehrig went on to appear in every game the Yankees played until April 30, 1939. In 1925, Gehrig batted.295, with 20 home runs and 68 runs batted in over 126 games.Unlike Ruth, Gehrig was not a gifted position player, so he played first base, often the position for a strong hitter but weaker fielder. The 23-year-old Yankee's breakout season came in 1926, when he batted.313 with 47 doubles, an AL-leading 20 triples, 16 home runs, and 112 RBIs. In the 1926 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, Gehrig hit.348 with two doubles and four RBIs. The Cardinals won the series 4 games to 3.
File:1928 Gehrig Speaker Cobb Ruth.jpg|thumb|left|Gehrig, Tris Speaker, Ty Cobb, and Babe Ruth in 1928
In 1927, Gehrig put together one of the greatest seasons by any batter in history, hitting.373, with 218 hits: 101 singles, 52 doubles, 18 triples, 47 home runs, a then-record 175 RBIs, a.474 on-base percentage and a.765 slugging percentage. His 117 extra-base hits that season are second all-time to Ruth's 119 extra-base hits in 1921 and his 447 total bases are third all-time, after Ruth's 457 total bases in 1921 and Rogers Hornsby's 450 in 1922. Gehrig's production helped the 1927 Yankees to a 110–44 record, the AL pennant and a four-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series.
Although the AL recognized his season by naming him league MVP, Gehrig's accomplishments were overshadowed by Ruth's record-breaking sixty home runs and the overall dominance of the 1927 Yankees, a team often cited as having the greatest lineup of all time, the famed "Murderers' Row."
In 1929, the Yankees debuted wearing numbers on their uniforms. Gehrig wore number 4 because he hit behind Ruth, who batted third in the lineup.
In 1932, Gehrig became the first player in the 20th century to hit four home runs in a game, accomplishing the feat on June 3 against the Philadelphia Athletics at Shibe Park. He narrowly missed hitting a fifth home run when Athletics center fielder Al Simmons made a leaping catch of another fly ball at the center-field fence. Following the game, Yankees manager Joe McCarthy told him, "Well, Lou, nobody can take today away from you." On the same day, however, John McGraw announced his retirement after 30 years of managing the New York Giants, so McGraw, not Gehrig, got the main headlines in the city's sports sections the next day. Gehrig's four home run game was only the third in MLB history to that point, the first since Ed Delahanty in 1896.