What was lou gehrig remembered for

Wally Pipped?? The Yankees retired Gehrig? Lou Gehrig was also nicknamed? Lou Gehrig attended Columbia University in New York from , but quit near the end of his sophomore year to sign a professional baseball contract. Copyright by Who2? By this time, Ruth and Gehrig had become friends, in spite of their disparate lifestyles and contrasting personalities.

Gehrig took the Babe fishing. Ruth tried to take Gehrig to the bars. Gehrig a Chihuahua puppy as a thank you. They were also pretty good business partners. Well, not exactly partners; no one could really partner with the Babe.

Along the way, the two big leaguers captained all-star teams made up of local players from Ohio to Missouri to the California Coast. The Babe also gave Gehrig advice on how to negotiate with their mutual employer. The Yankees sent him their usual contract, which Gehrig had signed automatically the last few years, but this time he let it sit on his desk. The money may have been less than Ruth had suggested Gehrig was worth, but it was a big raise.

More importantly for the conservative Gehrig, who was seeking financial security for himself and his parents, it was three years in length. The Yankees then went on to sweep the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. Gehrig had a monster Series. In the four games, he hit. Ruth hit. He also hit three home runs in Game 4, thus stealing the spotlight once again from his friend and teammate. The season saw the rise of a new American League dynasty. This one was in Philadelphia, not New York.

The Yankees never caught them; Philadelphia clinched the pennant on September The next day, manager Miller Huggins, who had been ill for weeks, checked himself into the hospital.

Doctors determined that he had been suffering from a rare skin infection called erysipelas, which had infected his bloodstream. Despite receiving four blood transfusions in less than a week, Huggins died on September 25, He was 51 years old.

Huggins was the only major league manager that Gehrig had ever known, and his loss crushed the usually stoic first baseman. He taught me everything I know. There was never a more patient and pleasant man to work for. A little more than a month after Huggins died, the stock market crashed, and the nation soon fell into the Great Depression. After a decade of glitz, glamour and overindulgence, an era exemplified by Babe Ruth, the country was entering hard times, and it needed a new kind of baseball hero, one who was solid, dependable and dignified.

They would find that hero in Lou Gehrig. With Huggins gone, the Yankees found a new manager in their former star pitcher Bob Shawkey, who had never managed in the major leagues. Gehrig had one of the best seasons of his career, batting. What makes those numbers even more astounding is that Gehrig played the last three weeks of the season with a broken finger that required surgery after the season ended.

While he was in the hospital, doctors discovered bone chips in his left elbow, another injury that required surgery. Instead, general manager Ed Barrow replaced Shawkey with Joe McCarthy, who had managed the Chicago Cubs for the previous five seasons, and led the team to the National League pennant. McCarthy was a disciplinarian who imposed a strict dress code and a rigorous exercise regimen on the team. From the day he was hired, McCarthy made it clear that players had to be well conditioned or they would be benched.

Gehrig stayed in shape year round and showed up to play every day — literally. By the time that McCarthy took the helm in April , Gehrig had already played in consecutive games. Gehrig had another astounding season, hitting.

Gehrig also tied Ruth for most home runs in the American League with Gehrig actually hit 47 homers that year, and should have won the title in his own right. Unfortunately, a home run that he hit on April 26, , against the Washington Senators was disallowed. Fellow Yankee Lyn Lary, who was on first base, incorrectly thought that the ball that Gehrig had batted out of the park had been caught by outfielder Harry Rice.

Lary left the base path, and Gehrig was declared out for passing the runner. Nevertheless, his mistake cost Gehrig his chance of outdoing the man who overshadowed him for most of his career. While many at the time argued that Gehrig was even better than Ruth, none could dispute that Ruth was the superior negotiator and businessman. By , the nation had fallen deeper into economic despair. Banks all over the country had collapsed.

Unemployment had risen to 25 percent, and it was affecting the business of baseball. Attendance at Yankee Stadium fell more than 20 percent in After three years of falling short, the Yankees bounced back and won the American League pennant in They won games, scored more than 1, runs and won the pennant by 13 games over Philadelphia.

Gehrig had yet another stellar season, hitting. His best day of the season , and perhaps of his career, came on June 3 in Shibe Park against the Athletics. Gehrig always liked hitting at Shibe. In his first at-bat, Gehrig drove a George Earnshaw fastball over the fence in left-center field.

In his second time up, he hit his second round-tripper against Earnshaw, this one a blast over the wall in right. In the fifth inning, he took the big right-hander deep a third time. It was the fourth time Gehrig had homered three times in a game, a new major league record. Only two players had ever hit four home runs in a game : Ed Delahanty did it in , and Bobby Lowe accomplished the feat in In his fifth at-bat, Gehrig grounded out, but a six-run rally by the Yankees in the top of the ninth inning gave him a sixth at-bat and another shot for the all-time record.

He drove a pitch to deep center field. Although it first appeared that the ball was headed for the center-field fence, Al Simmons leapt and made a remarkable catch, robbing Gehrig of a chance for a record fifth round-tripper.

Gehrig should have grabbed all of the headlines for his record-tying performance. As for Gehrig, the story of the man who smacked four home runs for the first time in the modern era was relegated to a much shorter piece in the same sports section.

Gehrig hit. Perhaps even more important than winning the Series, prior to Game 3, Lou Gehrig had been courting his future wife. At a party thrown by one of their mutual friends, Gehrig met Eleanor Grace Twitchell , a year-old secretary from Chicago. Unlike Lou, Eleanor was an extrovert. Despite the obvious differences in personality, Lou and Eleanor got along well at the party.

After Gehrig headed to spring training, the two maintained a courtship by correspondence, writing each other often until their reunion in Chicago, when the Yankees came to play the White Sox on May 8, Although they had barely spent any time together alone and had mostly talked in letters, Gehrig proposed to Eleanor the day after the Yankees pulled into the Windy City.

Eleanor accepted. Gehrig and the Yankees failed to win the pennant for the next three years. Despite the lack of team success, Gehrig had some of the most memorable — and some of the most pivotal — experiences of his career. Early in the season, a fact that should have been obvious to Gehrig was brought to his attention by New York World-Telegram sportswriter Dan Daniel. In early June, Daniel approached Gehrig and asked him if he knew how many consecutive games he had played. Gehrig won the starting first base job on the strength of almost half a million votes from the fans, more than three times that of runner-up Jimmie Foxx.

In the game, Gehrig came to the plate four times, walking twice, grounding out and striking out. The American League won, When the first inning of the game ended, Gehrig was called to home plate, where American League President Will Harridge presented him with a silver statue to commemorate the occasion.

My best wishes are with you for many additional years of success. Gehrig downplayed the accomplishment, reminding writers who inquired that ballplayers had off-days and rain delays and only worked about eight months out of the year. Enjoy our content? Join our newsletter to get the latest in sports news delivered straight to your inbox! Your sports. His diagnosis with the disease helped put the spotlight on the condition, and in the years since Gehrig's passing, it has come to be known popularly as "Lou Gehrig's disease.

On May 2, , Gehrig's ironman streak came to an end when he voluntarily took himself out of the lineup. Not long after, Gehrig retired from baseball. He returned to Yankee Stadium on July 4 of that year so that the team could hold a day in his honor. Standing on the field where he'd made so many memories and wearing his old uniform, Gehrig said goodbye to his fans with a short, tearful speech to the crowded ballpark.

Thank you. In addition, the Yankees retired Gehrig's uniform, making him the first baseball player ever to receive that honor. Over the next year, Gehrig maintained a busy schedule, accepting a civic role with the City of New York in which the former ballplayer determined the time of release for prisoners in the city's penal institutions. By , however, Gehrig's health had significantly deteriorated.

He largely remained at home, too frail to even sign his own name, much less go out. On June 2, , he passed away in his sleep at his home in New York City. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!

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