Background

Gehrig was born in Manhattan in 1903 to Christina and Heinrich Gehrig, both recent immigrants from Germany. His father, a native of Baden, was an ironworker by trade and worked variously as a tinsmith, mechanic, and janitor. Lou was the only one of their children to survive past infancy. Because of this, Gehrig and his mother developed an extremely close relationship. Although the Gehrig family was lower-middle class, Christina Gehrig worked hard as a maid, cook, and washerwoman to make sure that Gehrig had every opportunity to succeed. From a young age, Gehrig helped his mother, delivering the washing that she took in, but he still found plenty of time to play.

Education

Gehrig excelled at all of the sports which could be played on the streets of New York, including his favorite, baseball. In the summer, he and his friends often dove into the Hudson River, off of the cliffs at 181st Street where the George Washington Bridge would later be built. When he was eleven Gehrig swam the whole way to New Jersey and back from this point, which reportedly earned him a boxing on the ears from his father. Dangerous stunts aside, the elder Gehrig encouraged Lou's physical development, often taking Gehrig along when he went to the turnvereins, gymnasiums where German-American men gathered. Heinrich Gehrig also bought Lou his first baseball glove.

Christina Gehrig dreamed of Gehrig going to college and becoming an engineer, even though at that time it was rare for working class children to continue their education beyond the eighth grade. After Gehrig graduated from grammar school, she arranged for him to attend the High School of Commerce, where he learned useful clerking skills like typing and bookkeeping. He also gained some fame as a player on Commerce's football, soccer, and baseball teams. Commerce won three straight soccer championships in his years there, and in 1920 Gehrig was even invited to play in a national high-school baseball championship game in Chicago with the Commerce team.

Christina Gehrig was dismayed at her son's continued interest in baseball, a sport which was only for "bummers" as far as she was concerned, and it took a great deal of pleading for Gehrig to convince her to let him take the trip to Chicago. The Commerce team traveled to Chicago on an elegant train, where former president William Howard Taft and other dignitaries stopped by to wish them well. In the ninth inning of the game, which was played in Wrigley Field, Gehrig hit a grand slam home run - a rare feat, for in the entire Major League season the previous year, only eighteen home runs had been hit at Wrigley Field.

Gehrig did not only play baseball with his school's team. The summer Gehrig was sixteen, he pitched in a Yonkers city league on the Otis Elevator Company team, since he had gotten an office job with that company for the summer. He also earned $5 a game playing semi-professional ball with the Minqua Baseball Club, which was sponsored by one of the many Democratic clubs which covered New York in those days. The fact that Gehrig was now making money from baseball went a long way to reconciling Christina Gehrig to the sport.

In Gehrig's senior year at Commerce, Christina took a job as a maid and cook at one of Columbia University's fraternity houses, where she made a connection with Columbia's graduate manager of athletics, Bobby Watt. Watt came to a Commerce game and watched Gehrig play football one day, and he was impressed enough to give Gehrig a football scholarship to the university.

Although it was against the rules for college players to earn any money from their sport, this was a widely violated rule. Scores of college-age men played in the minor leagues over the summer under assumed names, and in 1921, months after graduating from high school, Gehrig was one of them. He signed a contract with the Hartford Senators, a Class A team affiliated with the New York Giants. For two weeks he played under the name "Lou Lewis," but then Columbia found out and forced him to quit. Gehrig lost his eligibility to play for Columbia for one year as a result, but for the next two summers he played semi-professional baseball on Sunday afternoons with a Morristown, New Jersey team as Lou Long. This was widely known, but no one is sure whether Columbia never found out this time, or whether they knew and decided to ignore it.

Gehrig played his one and only season of baseball for Columbia, as a pitcher, in 1923. He was almost instantly heralded as a star. In one game, he set a record for number of strikeouts - seventeen - which would stand at Columbia for almost fifty years. In another, he hit the longest home run ever at Columbia's South Field: it bounced off the steps of the library across 116th street, nearly beaning the dean of the college. Through such feats, Gehrig caught the eye of New York Yankees scout Paul Krichell, who offered him $3,500 to sign with the Yankees. Gehrig did. Although it disappointed his mother to see him drop out of school, both of Gehrig's parents were ill at the time and the family desperately needed the money.

Career

Gehrig started playing for the Yankees in June of 1923. He made his major league debut only weeks later, on June 16. He spent much of the 1923 and 1924 seasons in the minor leagues, playing for the Hartford Senators, but he was learning the confidence he needed to play big-league baseball. He was called back to the Yankees in late August of 1924 and became an invaluable pinch-hitter, and in 1925 he joined the starting line-up.

Gehrig began his consecutive games streak on June 1, 1925, when he pinch-hit for shortstop Pee-Wee Wanninger. The next day, June 2, Gehrig started at first base. The Yankees already had a good first baseman, the crowd-pleasing Wally Pipp, but that morning Pipp had been struck in the head with a pitch during batting practice. He spent two weeks in the hospital recovering from his injuries, and by the time he returned Gehrig was well established at first base. Pipp was eventually traded, and from June 2 on, Gehrig would play in every single game the Yankees played until 1939.

The Yankees of the late 1920s and the 1930s were legendary. With Gehrig and Ruth, they had the two most powerful hitters in their league; it was not uncommon for each of them individually to have more home runs in a year than many entire teams. Although the Yankees lost a close series in 1926, by 1927 they seemed invincible. Ruth set a record that year with sixty home runs, while Gehrig, the cleanup hitter, set his own record with 175 runs batted in. The Yankees became the first American League team ever to sweep the World Series, and then in 1928 they did it again. Although they did not play in a series again until 1932, the team still had an amazing record in the intervening years. In the 1931 season they set a record with 1,067 runs batted in.

In 1935, Ruth finally left the Yankees and, for one season, Gehrig was the team's uncontested star. Then Joe DiMaggio joined the team, and once again Gehrig was relegated to second place, batting clean-up behind a star. However, Gehrig, always a team player, did not resent DiMaggio.

With DiMaggio and Gehrig, the "Bronx Bombers," as the Yankees were dubbed, won two straight World Series over the New York Giants in 1936 and 1937. Gehrig still played on, going to work every day through broken fingers (at one point or another in his career, he broke every single finger at least once) and through the attacks of back pain which had recently started to plague him. Although occasionally stunts were employed to keep the streak alive, such as having Gehrig bat first and then immediately replacing him with a pinch-runner on days when his back pain was most excruciating, Gehrig was still one of the best, most reliable players in the game.

During the off season after the 1937 World Series, Gehrig went to Hollywood and starred in a Western film called Rawhide. This wasn't his first attempt at Hollywood stardom - there had been some talk of Gehrig replacing Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan, and some amusing photographs of Gehrig posing in a loincloth even appeared - but it was by far his most successful, even if the reviews were mixed.

Gehrig hit the 2,000 consecutive games played mark on May 31, 1938, but shortly thereafter problems started surfacing. Gehrig was no longer hitting like he used to. His batting average that season fell below .300. The rest of the Yankees made up for it, winning the pennant and sweeping the Chicago Cubs in the World Series, but it was clear that something was wrong. Gehrig came back in 1939, but he soon realized that his poor playing was hurting the whole team. On May 2, 1939, after 2,130 consecutive games, Gehrig voluntarily benched himself. In June, the Mayo Clinic diagnosed Gehrig with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Gehrig formally retired from baseball on July 4, 1939, in Yankee Stadium, where he gave one of the most memorable speeches in the history of sports, declaring himself to be "the luckiest man on the face of the earth."

In October 1939, Lou accepted Mayor Fiorello La Guardia's appointment to a 10-year term as a New York City Parole Commissioner and was sworn into office on January 2, 1940. He quietly and efficiently performed his duties. Gehrig reached the point where his deteriorating physical condition made it impossible for him to continue in the job, and he resigned from the position about a month before his death.

Achievements

• Lou Gehrig was one of the greatest hitters of all time. He made an impact on the Yankees, and his ability to hit propelled him to national stardom by the late 1920s. He compiled a streak of thirteen consecutive years with more than 100 runs and runs batted in, and a 12-year streak of hitting over .300. He led the American League in home runs three times and in runs scored four times, and ranked third all-time in RBIs and slugging percentage. The durable first baseman was selected as the American League's Most Valuable Player twice, won the Triple Crown in 1934, and won six world championships as a Yankee.
  
  Lou established a record for the number of consecutive games played: 2,130 games in succession from 1925 to 1939. This record stood for more than half a century.
  
  The Baseball Hall of Fame exempted him from the five-year waiting period, and he was honored by induction in Cooperstown in 1939. In 1989 a Lou Gehrig 25-cent postage stamp was issued by the U.S. Postal Service on the 50th anniversary of his retirement from baseball, depicting him both in profile and at bat (Scott number 2417).

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Rawhide

    (Baseball superstar Gehrig is one of several ranchers bein...)

    1938

Religion

Gehrig's parents claimed Lutheranism as their birth religion, but there are no records to show if Lou ever went through the rite of Confirmation that all Lutheran youths go through to become adult members of the church. There is a picture of him as a baby in what appears to be a baptismal gown.

Views

Although his career in baseball was over and his health was on a steady decline, Gehrig began work in the community in his later years. Lou joined the Parole Board, where he helped troubled youths.

Quotations: "In the beginning I used to make one terrible play a game. Then I got so I'd make one a week and finally I'd pull a bad one about once a month. Now, I'm trying to keep it down to one a season."

"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for 17 years, and I have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn't consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day?"

"So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for."

"I'm not a headline guy. I know that as long as I was following Ruth to the plate I could have stood on my head and no one would have known the difference."

"The ballplayer who loses his head, who can't keep his cool, is worse than no ballplayer at all."

"When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter - that's something."

"There is no room in baseball for discrimination. It is our national pastime and a game for all."

"When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed - that's the finest I know."

"When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body - it's a blessing."

"I love to win; but I love to lose almost as much. I love the thrill of victory, and I also love the challenge of defeat."

Personality

Gehrig had many qualities that belie his now-worldwide celebrity. He was quiet, dignified, soft-spoken and modest to a fault. He was noted for his lack of temperament and for his kindness to rookie players.

Physical Characteristics: Gehrig was a left-handed man, standing six feet one inch tall and weighing about 200 pounds.

During 1939 spring training Lou began to experience weakness and problems with coordination. He entered the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for health tests and on June 19, 1939 Lou was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a rare incurable muscular disorder which causes the muscular motor functions to degenerate, resulting in atrophying muscles, which in turn can lead to paralysis and ultimately death. He passed away from ALS on June 2, 1941 at the age of 37. His universal renown was so great that amyotrophic lateral sclerosis later became known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.

Quotes from others about the person

• Eleanor Gehrig: "This is going to sound corny as hell, but he was one of the greatest men I ever met in my youth. I say that from the standpoint of his being a gentleman, a sportsman and a husband. They simply don't come any better. Oh, now, I'm not the 'professional widow' who thinks simply because he was my husband, he was the greatest. Now put this in your notes. He left his shirts on the floor for me to pick up. I had to drag him to the haberdashers because he didn't give a damn about clothes, and he smoked as bad as I do. We were both chain smokers. We'd be hard put to stop one another today. He'd be sneaking them, and I'd be sneaking them. This isn't good for the younger generation, but it's the truth. Lou was human, and so was Babe Ruth."
  
  Joe McCarthy: "Lou, what else can I say except that it was a sad day in the life of everybody who knew you when you ... told me you were quitting as a ballplayer because you felt yourself a hindrance to the team. My God, man, you were never that."
  
  Kevin Nelson: "Lou Gehrig was to baseball what Gary Cooper was to the movies: a figure of unimpeachable integrity, massive and incorruptible, a hero. Today, both are seen as paradigms of manly virtue. Decent and God-fearing, yet strongly charismatic and powerful."
  
  Babe Ruth: "Lou should stand alone in that department. He should have had five that day. He got a fifth time at bat in the ninth inning of the game and hit his longest ball of the day. But Al Simmons dragged it out of the air near the center-field flagpole. That's baseball."

Interests

• Sport & Clubs

  football

Connections

Gehrig met Eleanor Twitchell in 1932. They began dating the next year and married in September. She was the daughter of Chicago Parks Commissioner Frank Twitchell. The couple had no children.

Father:

Heinrich Gehrig

(‎1867 - August 16, 1946)

Mother:

Christina Gehrig

(1882 - 1954)

Spouse:

Eleanor Grace Twitchell

(March 6, 1904 - March 6, 1984)

Friend:

Babe Ruth

References

• The Streak: Lou Gehrig, Cal Ripken Jr., and Baseball's Most Historic Record The fascinating story of baseball's legendary "Ironmen," two players from different eras who each achieved the coveted and sometimes confounding record of most consecutive games played.
  2017
• Lou Gehrig: One of Baseball's Greatest A biography focusing on the childhood of one of the greatest professional baseball players, who is remembered for playing 2,130 consecutive games in 14 seasons with the New York Yankees.
  1959
• Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig Luckiest Man gives readers an intimate portrait of the man who became an American hero: his life as a shy and awkward youth growing up in New York City, his unlikely friendship with Babe Ruth (a friendship that allegedly ended over rumors that Ruth had had an affair with Gehrig's wife), and his stellar career with the Yankees, where his consecutive games streak stood for more than half a century.
  2005
• Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man This biography traces Gehrig's life, from childhood through his illustrious career with the Yankees to his struggle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and his tragic death at the age of thirty-seven.
  1997
• Lou Gehrig: The Inspirational Story of Baseball Legend Lou Gehrig This book will reveal to readers much about Lou's story and the many accomplishments throughout his career.
  2014