Iron Horse

It was the year everyone was fascinated by a new craze called crossword puzzles --Jack Dempsey was World's Heavyweight Champion, What Price Glory was playing on Broadway, and Ty Cobb was still in his prime -- when Manager Miller Huggins of the New York Yankees, one fine day in June 1925, stepped up to a clumsy, rosy-cheeked rookie his scouts had picked up on the Columbia campus. "Gehrig," he muttered, "you take Wally Pipp's place at first base today." Last week, for the first time since that faraway day, the Yankees started a game without Lou Gehrig.

In those 14 years, milk-drinking, early-to-bed Lou Gehrig, son of a German-born Manhattan janitor, became famed as Base ball's Iron Horse. He played in 2,130 consecutive games (besides seven World Series and hundreds of exhibition games)--a record that no baseballer has ever approached or perhaps ever will.* Far more important than his record for durability, however, is Gehrig's batting record: 1,991 runs driven in (100 runs or more a year for 13 years), 2,721 hits (1,192 of them for extra bases), 1,886 runs (including 494 home runs), a lifetime batting average of .341. His record of 23 home runs with bases loaded surpasses even that of famed Babe Ruth.

In those 14 years, earnest, honest Lou Gehrig, the sort of player managers dream about, made a fetish of his endurance record. Eclipsed by his colorful, temperamental teammate Babe Ruth, plodding Lou Gehrig felt that his drawing power was his dependability rather than his brilliance. When, at spring training camp this year, the Iron Horse suddenly realized that he was getting rusty, panic overtook him. He brooded, became tense at bat. Sportswriters, viewing his feeble performance, wrote his batting obituary--for all the world to read -- before the season started.

Last week the mental strain was more than sensitive Yankee Gehrig could bear. The highest-salaried ($34,000 a year) baseballer in the major leagues had succeeded in getting only four hits and driving in only one run in the first eight games of the season. Every time he went to bat he felt that all the baseball fans in the world could hear him creak. When he got a hit he ran as though there were lead in his shoes. He missed low throws and grounders. Convinced that he was a hindrance rather than a help to his team, 35-year-old Lou Gehrig last week asked Manager Joe McCarthy to remove him from the Yankee lineup.

Sitting on the bench in Detroit's Briggs Stadium, Gehrig (known as Buster to his teammates) blubbered as he watched Babe Dahlgren take over his old stamping ground at first base, then silently watched his buddies hand the Tigers their worst defeat (22-10-2) in 27 years.* He graciously shook hands with young Dahlgren after the game, but the only Yankee who dared try to console him was Pitcher Lefty Gomez. "Hell, Lou." said Lefty, "it took 15 years to get you out of the game; sometimes I'm out in 15 minutes." In the grandstand, viewing all this, was Wally Pipp, now a Grand Rapids (Mich.) businessman. "I know just how he feels," said Mr. Pipp.

*Nearest was Yankee Everett Scott's string of 1,307 which ended three weeks before Gehrig's began. Many baseballers, however, have played major-league ball for a longer time. Famed Ty Cobb and Eddie Collins kept going for 24 years, Tris Speaker and Babe Ruth for 22. *Among the pitchers sent to the showers was Freddie Hutchinson, ballyhooed $70,000 Tiger rookie, appearing -in his first big-league game. Next day Rookie Hutchinson was sent back to a minor-league club for more seasoning,

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