Lou Gehrig

Three of the four Gehrig children died small, of whooping cough, measles and whatever took the baby, and the survivor weighed nearly 14 pounds at birth. His father was a sheet-metal worker from Baden who was often out of work with drink and epilepsy. His mother, a maid from Schleswig-Holstein, earned the money and set the rules. He spoke German before English. In June 1920 he hit a grand slam clean out of the major league park in Chicago in a high school game, which is how Columbia came to give a poor German kid a football scholarship. He lost his freshman eligibility for a summer of professional ball played under a false name, studied engineering, and left in 1923 when the Yankees offered to pay him.

A scout named Paul Krichell watched him hit one 450 feet on the Columbia field and signed him on April 30, 1923. He debuted that June as a pinch hitter at 19. On June 1, 1925, he pinch-hit again, for a shortstop named Pee-Wee Wanninger, and the next day Wally Pipp had a headache. Gehrig then played 2,130 consecutive games, through broken fingers and a back that seized, until he took himself out at Detroit on May 2, 1939. In between: a .340 average, 493 home runs, 1,995 runs batted in, the Triple Crown in 1934, four home runs in one afternoon in 1932, 23 grand slams, two Most Valuable Player awards and six championships, most of them won in the shadow of the loudest man in America.

He was 30 before he moved out of his parents' apartment. His mother had ended every romance he attempted until Eleanor Twitchell, whom he married in September 1933 and who then had to pry him loose from the streak: she once feigned illness to get him to stop at 1,999 games, and he played anyway. The symptoms started in the middle of the 1938 season. He could time a pitch perfectly, swing as hard as he could, and loop it softly to an outfielder. The Mayo Clinic named it on June 19, 1939, his 36th birthday, and gave him under three years with his mind intact throughout. Returning to the team he told a reporter that everyone was wishing him luck and he was dying. He was right to the month.

The speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939 has no settled text. Newspapers printed competing versions of nearly every line except the one nobody misheard, that he considered himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. The Yankees retired his number 4, the first club in baseball to retire any number, and the writers held a special election in December to put him in Cooperstown at 36. He died at Riverdale on June 2, 1941, 17 days short of 38, and was cremated, which is why the later argument over whether repeated concussions rather than ALS took him can never be resolved. Cal Ripken passed 2,130 in 1995. Baseball made June 2 Lou Gehrig Day in 2021.

Lou Gehrig's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Four home runs in one game other
  June 3 at Shibe Park, only the third such game in major league history 1932
• The Triple Crown season other
  A .363 average, 49 home runs and 166 runs batted in 1934
• The consecutive-games record other
  2,130 games. It stood for 56 years 1939
• The luckiest man speech speech
  Yankee Stadium, July 4, between games of a doubleheader, before 61,808 people 1939
• Uniform number 4 other
  The first number any major league club took out of circulation 1939
• Lou Gehrig's disease other
  The common American name for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis 1941

• June 26, 1920 aged 17 Hits a grand slam out of the major league park in Chicago, in a high school game
• 1921 aged ~18 Loses a year of college eligibility for playing summer ball as Henry Lewis John McGraw had advised him to do it. Twelve games for Hartford cost him his freshman season.
• April 30, 1923 aged 19 Signs with the Yankees after the scout Paul Krichell watches him at Columbia
• June 1, 1925 aged 21 Pinch-hits for Pee-Wee Wanninger and starts the streak The next day Wally Pipp sat out with a headache and never got the job back.
• September 1933 aged 30 Marries Eleanor Twitchell She hired Babe Ruth's agent for him and got him out of his mother's apartment.
• May 2, 1939 aged 35 Benches himself at Detroit after 2,130 games As captain he carried the lineup card to the umpires himself.
• June 19, 1939 aged 35 Diagnosed with ALS at the Mayo Clinic on his 36th birthday The prognosis was under three years, with no loss of mental function.
• July 4, 1939 aged 36 Calls himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth The crowd of 61,808 stood and cheered for close to two minutes.
• June 2, 1941 aged 37 Dies at home in Riverdale, 17 days short of 38

• Babe Ruth 1895–1948
  Baseball legend whose home-run hitting transformed the sport and made him a national celebrity. teammate, later estranged
• Joe DiMaggio 1914–1999
  Yankees center fielder whose hitting streak and celebrity made him an enduring symbol of mid-century America. successor in the Yankee lineup
• Jackie Robinson 1919–1972
  First African American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era, breaking the color barrier. kept out of the league he played in
• Jesse Owens 1913–1980
  Track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, defying Nazi ideology. contemporary in the same New York decade