Umpire Billy Evans, who called balls and strikes in more than 1,700 major league games, saw Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth in their prime in the same lineup. He held the opinion that Lou was the superior hitter.
“Gehrig was much harder to pitch to than Ruth,” Evans said after his retirement. “He murdered the change of pace and slow curve that Ruth disliked. Ruth, because of his lunge, was unable to control his bat as could Gehrig from his flat stance. Gehrig was never off balance, and always able to adapt his swing and timing to the slow stuff…”
“Ruth got the headlines. But it was Lou who came through for you in the clutch above all others,” Yankee manager Joe McCarthy said. “When we needed a lift, we looked to him, and Lou seldom failed.”
This weekend, Major League Baseball celebrates Lou Gehrig Day, near the anniversary of the day the former Yankee first baseman finally sat out of the lineup, ending his consecutive games streak, on June 2, 1939.
Gehrig’s rare disease and premature death tend to overshadow his remarkable skill as an athlete. He was called the “Iron Horse,” but he just as soon could have been called the “Iron Man,” because he had a body that seemed impenetrable.
The Sad End to Gehrig’s Playing Career
In 1940, for the first time in fifteen years, the Yankees entered the season with someone other than Gehrig at first base. The man they turned to, ironically, was named “Babe”—Mr. Ellsworth Dahlgren. No one expected Dahlgren to be Lou Gehrig, and of course he wasn’t, but hopes were still high that the team would win an unprecedented fifth straight championship. Instead, the Yankees staggered through the first four months of the season. There were obvious reasons why the Yankees were in fourth place on August 1st, but not everyone wanted to rely on common sense.
Jimmy Powers was a sports writer for the New York Daily News, and late that summer his name was on a shameful article. Published on August 18, 1940, it ran under the headline “Has ‘Polio’ Hit the Yankees?”:
Has the mysterious ‘polio’ germ which felled Lou Gehrig also struck his former teammates, turning a once great team into a floundering non-contender? According to overwhelming opinion of the medical profession, poliomyelitis, similar to infantile paralysis, is communicable. The Yanks were exposed to it at its most acute stage. They played ball with the afflicted Gehrig, dressed and undressed in the locker room with him, traveled, played cards and ate with him. Isn’t it possible some of them also became infected?”
Of course, Gehrig wasn’t suffering from polio. He had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which attacked his body and ended his career in May of 1939. It was a rare disease, extremely deadly (but not communicable). Lou sued the Daily News for $1 million, and shortly after that, ten of his former teammates joined to sue the same newspaper for more than $2 million. Faced with losing his job and costing his employer piles of money, Powers issued an apology. Gehrig dropped his lawsuit. He died the following July at the age of 37.
