The Full Biography
Lou Gehrig. First baseman. The Yorkville son who made showing up a career, then gave a disease his name.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a man at a bank of microphones on the Fourth of July, a packed Yankee Stadium, a sentence about luck that the country still recites. The year is 1939. What the still cannot show is Henry Louis Gehrig of Yorkville, a first baseman who had already played 2,130 games without sitting, a quiet left-handed swing that lived in the same lineup as Babe Ruth and then Joe DiMaggio, and a body that took itself out of the card on May 2, two months before the speech, because the work had become something he could no longer do honestly.
He was born on June 19, 1903, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, to Heinrich and Christina Gehrig, German immigrants. Several children in the household did not live. He did. The father worked with his hands; the mother cooked in other people’s kitchens and pushed the surviving son toward school as if school were a way out of the tenement. He went to Commerce High, then to Columbia University, where he played football and baseball and hit a ball, the story goes, out of South Field and into the next conversation. Yankees scout Paul Krichell signed him. He left Morningside Heights without a degree. The door was not a parade. It was a contract in 1923 and a pinch-hit here and there while Wally Pipp still owned first base.
He debuted on June 15, 1923. For two seasons he was extra. On June 1, 1925, he pinch-hit for the shortstop, Pee Wee Wanninger. The next afternoon Miller Huggins wrote his name in at first. Pipp was out — a headache, a slump, a manager shaking a lineup; the tavern version is neater than the file. Gehrig did not come out again until 1939. That is the streak: not a stunt, a habit. He played hurt. He played dull Tuesdays in St. Louis. He played after Ruth had the headline and after DiMaggio had the center-field light. Durability was the public word. Competence was the private one. He showed up, hit the ball hard, and did not require the room to love him first.
The 1927 Yankees were Murderers’ Row. Ruth hit sixty. Gehrig hit forty-seven, drove in 175, batted .373, and won the American League Most Valuable Player award. In 1931 he drove in 184, an American League mark that still sits on the page. In 1934 he won the Triple Crown: .363, forty-nine home runs, 165 runs batted in. He hit twenty-three grand slams, a major-league record that stood until Alex Rodriguez passed it in 2013. He finished with 493 home runs and a .340 lifetime average. Six World Series titles: 1927, 1928, 1932 beside Ruth; 1936, 1937, 1938 beside DiMaggio. He was MVP again in 1936. The Yankees retired his number 4 in 1939, the first time a major-league club retired a number. The Hall of Fame took him that same year by special election, while he was still alive to know it.
The World Series pile is a Yankee machine and also a first baseman who did not take a day. 1927 and 1928 beside Ruth. 1932, again, in a Series the country still files under Ruth’s called shot. Then the DiMaggio club: pennants and titles in 1936, 1937, 1938. Six rings. On June 3, 1932, at Shibe Park in Philadelphia, he hit four home runs in one game — a day’s work so clean the box score still looks like a typesetter’s error. In 1936 he took a second Most Valuable Player award, the lineup’s center after Ruth had gone. In 1938 he played his last full season. The average dipped. The power dipped. Writers talked about age. The body was already keeping a different set of books.
People who only know the speech miss the daily work. He was not a colorful man in a colorful decade. Writers called him the Iron Horse because they needed a noun. Teammates called him Lou. He took the extra base. He hit behind Ruth when Ruth was the country’s idea of a ballplayer, then held the middle of the order when Ruth was gone and a rookie from San Francisco was learning the Stadium. The streak is a civic object now. In 1925 it was only a young first baseman who did not ask for a day.
Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.Lou Gehrig, Yankee Stadium, July 4, 1939
The seasons between the streak’s start and the speech are a pile, not a montage. In 1927 he hit .373 with 47 home runs and 175 runs batted in, MVP on a club that also had Ruth’s sixty. In 1928 the Yankees swept again. In 1930 he drove in 174. In 1931, 184 — an American League mark that still sits on the page. In 1932, at Shibe Park, four home runs in one afternoon; that October the club took another Series, the one the country files under Ruth’s called shot. In 1934 the Triple Crown: .363, 49, 165. In 1936, 49 home runs again and a second MVP, the middle of an order that now had DiMaggio in center. Pennants and titles in 1936, 1937, 1938. Twenty-three career grand slams. 493 home runs. A .340 lifetime average. Six World Series titles. The Hall of Fame took him by special election in 1939, while he could still know it. Writers needed the Iron Horse because the box scores were too quiet to make a nickname from personality. The personality was showing up and hitting the ball hard on a Tuesday in St. Louis.
Columbia had been football as well as baseball. Commerce High had been a city championship and a mother who treated school as a way out of Yorkville. Paul Krichell signed him for the Yankees. He left Morningside Heights without the degree Christina had wanted. The 1923 debut was a pinch-hit. The 1925 habit was a lineup card. Wally Pipp’s headache is the tavern version. Miller Huggins writing a new name at first is the file. For fourteen seasons he did not ask the card to change.
Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day, July 4, 1939, sat between games of a doubleheader. The club retired number 4 that afternoon — the first time a major-league team had retired a number. Teammates gave him a trophy. The Stadium stood. He thanked the groundskeepers, the rivals, the wife, the luck. Two months earlier, in Detroit, he had already done the professional thing: he took himself out. Babe Dahlgren played first. The streak stopped at 2,130. The Mayo Clinic, in June, had named amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The speech is the civic object. The benching is the file.
Eleanor Twitchell of Chicago married him on September 29, 1933. She was the household’s steel. They had no children. He wrote his mother often. He blushed at bawdy stories. The public Gehrig is a monument. The private one was a Yorkville son who had been the only child to live and was trying not to waste the luck. Heinrich worked with his hands. Christina cooked in other people’s kitchens and pushed school as a way out of the tenement. Commerce High, then Columbia, then a Yankee contract: that is the door. South Field is the campus story. Krichell is the scout. Pipp is the tavern version. Huggins writing the card is the file. Babe Dahlgren took first on May 2. The Mayo Clinic named ALS in June. July 4 was the thank-you. Number 4 came down that afternoon, the first uniform a big-league club retired. The Hall of Fame vote was special and arrived while he could still hear it. Riverdale was the last house. That is the man who sat down on purpose in Detroit.
That is the turn, and it is easy to let the sentence eat the career. The turn is May 2, 1939, in Detroit. He took himself out. He told Joe McCarthy to put someone else at first, for the good of the club. Cal Ripken Jr. would pass the number on September 6, 1995, at Camden Yards; the record moved, as records should. What did not move is the decision. A man whose whole public meaning was endurance chose, while he could still choose, not to pretend. The country, needing a handle, gave the disease his name.
Six things most people never knew
- Yorkville and Columbia are the first rooms, not a farm club myth. German immigrant parents. A mother who cooked. A left-handed hitter who left Morningside Heights for a Yankee contract.
- The streak began as a pinch-hit on June 1, 1925. He started the next day. The Pipp headache is the tavern version. Huggins writing a new name is the file.
- The 1934 Triple Crown is a full season, not a footnote to 1927. Average, home runs, runs batted in. He did it after Ruth had already taught the country to look elsewhere.
- Twenty-three grand slams was the record for more than eighty years. Rodriguez passed it in 2013. The number was a quiet pile, like the man.
- Number 4 was the first uniform a big-league club retired. 1939. The honor arrived while he could still hear the Stadium say it.
- He took himself out before the speech. May 2, Detroit. July 4 was the public thank-you. The career ended on a lineup card he refused to keep falsifying.
He married Eleanor Twitchell of Chicago on September 29, 1933. She was the household’s steel. After the diagnosis she managed the calendar, the visitors, the silence. They had no children. Friends from the clubhouse describe a man who blushed at bawdy stories and wrote his mother often. The public Gehrig is a monument. The private one was a son who had been the only child to live, trying not to waste the luck.
The later years
Those years were short and specific, and they were medical before they were civic. In June 1939 the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, named what the spring had already shown: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease of the motor neurons. The muscles that let a man swing, walk, button a shirt, and, in time, swallow and speak, lose the nerve that tells them to work. There is no infection to fight in the ordinary sense. There was, in 1939, no treatment that reversed the slope. The country, needing a handle, gave the disease his name. The diagnosis is not a metaphor for endurance. It is a chart of what the body can no longer do.
He went home to 5204 Delafield Avenue in Riverdale, the brick house he and Eleanor had taken in the Bronx when the Stadium was still a commute. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia appointed him a New York City parole commissioner in 1940. He tried to make the title a job, not a sympathy gift: files, hearings, the dull civic work of deciding who might be let back into the city. Colleagues said he came as long as he could walk into the room. When the walk failed, the job failed with it. Eleanor managed the calendar, the visitors, the silence. They had no children. The house was a marriage and a sickroom.
The decline followed the known slope of ALS. Speech thickened. The hands that had hit four in Philadelphia could not be trusted with a fork. He did not return to a uniform. He did not make a farewell tour. On June 2, 1941, he died at home on Delafield Avenue. He was thirty-seven. It was sixteen years to the day after he had first taken Pipp’s place in the starting nine. La Guardia ordered flags lowered. Ballparks around the league did the same. The funeral was at Christ Episcopal Church in Riverdale. He is buried at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, in Westchester, not far from the train a Yankee used to take. Eleanor outlived him for decades and put the name on research instead of only on a speech. Columbia’s ALS center still carries both of them.
After he was gone
Samuel Goldwyn released The Pride of the Yankees in 1942, with Gary Cooper in the uniform. The picture fixed the speech in the national mouth. The disease kept the name. Ripken broke the streak; Rodriguez broke the slams; the Yankees still do not issue 4. Every July someone quotes the luck. Every May someone should quote the benching.
He came out of Yorkville, left Columbia, stood next to Ruth without becoming a second Ruth, stood next to DiMaggio without becoming a second DiMaggio, played 2,130 games, hit the ball into the seats with the bases full more often than anyone of his century, took himself out, thanked a Stadium, and died at thirty-seven with a disease that still uses his name. If you only remember the speech, you have the civic object. If you remember Commerce High, the Triple Crown, and a first baseman who sat down on purpose, you have him.
Portrait: The Library of Congress · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons