Lou Gehrig Read online

  At Columbia, Gehrig had the finishing touches applied to him that resulted in his becoming completely girl-shy and frightened of the female of the species from then on until he met the only woman he ever loved or wholly trusted, the girl that he married.

  And the same experience likewise tended to withdraw him even more within himself, and to fill him with a sense of his own unworthiness and lack of everything.

  Arrived on the Columbia campus and immediately a football star, Lou Gehrig was made a member of the fraternity wherein his mother was working as a cook, and where he himself worked as a waiter to help earn his college keep.

  This on the face of it would seem to be a diamond studded example of the workings of our Democracy, except that in truth and fairness to justice, it didn’t quite work out that way.

  Actually it was Gehrig who honored the Fiddle-de-thates by joining up, rather than the other way around. In those days, fraternity rushing at Columbia was a fiercely contested affair fraught with considerable jealousy and backbiting, and freshmen who looked as though they might someday become star athletes and shed their light upon their brothers, were plums, and Lou Gehrig was a plum de luxe. They took him in, not because they wanted to, but because they had to. If they hadn’t, another fraternity would have.

  But Gehrig reported in later life that they weren’t very nice to him. He was a brother all right, but he wasn’t quite as much of a brother as some of the other lads whose mothers weren’t cooks. The boys managed somehow to convey that fine distinction to him. It was the first time that the big, rough, dumb Dutchman butted into the wall reared by the so-called upper classes. It bled a little where he hit, and left a scar. In fact, the brothers never did warm up to him until he became the famous Yankee first baseman and heir to the throne of Babe Ruth. Then they would come around and give him the grip and remember the good old days in the frat house and how jolly it all was. And Gehrig’s lip would curl, because he was remembering other things.

  For instance, how, many a night after he had helped his mother clean up the kitchen, had washed the dishes, and studied, he would sleep in his clothes in a chair in the fraternity house, too tired out to go home. Also because he had to be on the spot early in the morning to help his mother get breakfast for the boys.

  And he was probably remembering the humiliations and heartaches that came with wearing clothes that always had a patch in them somewhere, of being in the college and playing for the college, but never actually being of the college.

  He was a stunningly handsome boy with wavy, brown hair and dimples in his cheeks, and girls would take a great shine to him when they saw him in football togs, or in baseball uniform with “COLUMBIA” arching across his broad chest.

  But the shine would rub off when they saw him hatless, coatless in his worn, patched clothes, and of course he didn’t own a dinner jacket. Handsome as he was, the campus flames in most cases simply couldn’t afford to be seen with a boy who didn’t even have decent clothes. And besides, his mother was a sort of a cook, or chambermaid, or something in the fraternity house. Funny situation, eh? The girls preferred to skip it, and Gehrig skipped them. And the brothers, to a considerable extent skipped Lou. If Gehrig ever had a close man friend at Columbia, he never mentioned it to anyone.

  What was happening was not exactly calculated to make the boy happy, or gregarious. On the contrary. He withdrew still further within himself. He became more shy and self-accusing. He was convinced that he was no good for anything and never would be.

  5

  A CAREER ENDED AND BEGUN

  Time lazily yawned past the golden statue of Alma Mater enthroned on Columbia’s asphalt campus. A Major Bill Corum, youngest Major in the A. E. F. whose return from the battlefields of Europe was still fresh in the memory of the country, used to attend the School of Journalism and look out the window onto South Field, and watch a husky youngster with piano legs and dimpled cheeks endlessly shagging flies, or catching balls thrown at him by mates, and the Major, yet to become a top sports writer of the golden era to come, wondered about him, and who he was, and what made him chase and catch those balls eternally.

  Lou Gehrig went out for baseball in the spring and brought the lovelight to the eyes of Andy Coakley, Columbia coach and former pitcher for the Philadelphia Athletics. Andy made a pitcher out of him, took up the batting lessons where Kane had left off, and pretty soon Lou Gehrig was poling them high, wide and handsome over the college fences. He hit seven home runs in one season, one of them the longest ever seen at South Field, and batted over .540.

  And he won himself a new name. They called him the “Babe Ruth of Columbia.”

  For the second time the shadow fell athwart him, though by now it was conceded to be an even greater honor, because the Babe had ushered in the year 1921 with 54 home runs, 1922 with 35, and 1923 with 41.

  The Golden Decade was under way.

  Then for the second time disaster in the form of illness struck at his home and his career, only this time it fell upon his mother, and Gehrig the boy was called upon to make a stern and important choice. He was young and simple, naive and boyish, and so he remained for most of his life, but over that one choice, the boy became a man.

  A collegian who could sock a baseball as far as Gehrig was hitting them in the college games would naturally attract the attention of the Major League scouts, and Paul Kritchell, famous Yankee scout, saw enough of Gehrig to convince the management that he was worth signing.

  Kritchell approached Andy Coakley and Gehrig, and Gehrig was excited and flattered, but all offers were turned down, because, to Momma Gehrig a man who did nothing but play games, even if it was for being paid money, was nothing but a loafer and a no good, and besides she was swelling with pride because her son was a “Collision” and a fraternity too, and she had helped him to do these things in spite of everything. Please God, as long as she had her health and strength, Lou should get an education as good as anybody in the country.

  But it pleased God to try this family sorely, for it was her health and strength that failed when she contracted double pneumonia. Pop Gehrig was still sickly and unable to work. The little that Gehrig could bring in with his table waiting in the fraternity house and other odd jobs could not keep the family going, let alone pay the mounting doctor bills.

  Life closed in on the Gehrigs. They were always close to the edge of things. Doctors and more doctors. Bills and more bills. Not a cent in the house, and nothing coming in.

  There has been considerable discussion as to how much, in cold cash, Lou Gehrig actually cost the New York Yankees. According to Gehrig, he received $500 for making the momentous decision to sign a contract with organized baseball.

  That $500 was the biggest sum of money that any of the Gehrigs had ever seen. It came at a time when it was desperately needed. It paid rent and doctors and hospital bills and nurses.

  It represented a sacrifice made by Gehrig, freely and unheroically and untheatrically. For that sorely needed $500 he sold his right and his chance to go on into that other world around whose fringes he had played the last two years.

  But one suspects from several things Gehrig said later, that that world no longer looked as attractive or worthwhile to him as it once had. Or that he was sorry to lose it. It is hard to get reserved and sensitive men to tell you what they really think and feel in their innermost beings. No one ever knew Lou Gehrig better or one tenth as well as his wife. And she says that the closest she could get to one of the toughest decisions a boy ever had to make and the manner of making it, is that it was simply thought of and simply done, too. Mom was ill and needed attention and there was no money and what would he care about an education if Mom died because he hadn’t got her the right kind of care. That’s all there was to it. Kritchell, the Yankee Scout, was there at the right time with the contract and the money, and Gehrig signed.

  And having signed, he had to face a heartbroken and reproachful mother who could find it hard to forgive that her son for whom she had sa
crificed so much to make him a collision should be going to become a bummer and a professional baseball player.

  They probably yelled at one another after Mrs. Gehrig recovered and found out, because loud voices and yelling were part of the Gehrig household. But stripped of the commonplaces, the deed had nobility of which it cannot be robbed. It also was irrevocable.

  There is an amusing story about the signing which may be apocryphal but the source is good.

  The signing with the Yankees was kept secret for a time and during this period, Wally Pipp, the Yankee first baseman—who had been playing on the team, as we remember, when Gehrig was twelve, approached Lou on the campus and made him an offer. A mid-western National League Club had had its eye on Gehrig’s batting, and had empowered Pipp to negotiate with him and offer him a job as first baseman with the western club.

  Gehrig blushed, and stammered, and kicked the ground with his spikes, and said—“Aw, gee, Mr. Pipp, that’s awfully kind,—I’d like to play for them, but I guess I’d better tell you, I’ve signed to play with the Yankees.”

  Pipp went away and sought a bench to sit down and cool off. The boy he had been trying to get for a national league club, might eventually get his job at first base for the Yankees away from him. Phew! Mr. Pipp was practically psychic.

  But there were to be many discouraging moments and frustrations before Gehrig was to hear Miller Huggins say one spring—“All right, Gehrig. Get in there in place of Pipp.”

  Because for all of his big frame, loud voice and quick smile, Lou Gehrig was one of those strange souls born to be frustrated, to have glory and happiness always within his reach, yes, even to have it in his grasp, only to have it snatched away from him.

  6

  THOSE FABULOUS YANKEES

  The trick, in telling the story of the Yankees of 1926–7–8, is to keep away from the record book, inviting though it may appear with its orderly rows of figures and averages, ticketing the ability and performance of each man as though he were a horse. Record books always frightened me, though some people do not seem to be able to judge or visualize a ball player unless he has a mess of figures strung out after his name.

  But my story of the Yanks of those glamor years shortly before the roof fell in upon the American financial structure, is that they were the hardest drinking, hardest hitting ball club in the history of the game, the most colorful and the most exciting to watch.

  They had as their manager a sharp, dried up, mite of a man named Miller Huggins who was all wisdom and common sense and baseball brains. They had the dream pitching staff consisting of Pennock, Hoyt, Moore and Pipgras. There was Earl Combs, the lanky, fast Kentucky Colonel, Mark Koenig, the Swiss watch movement, Poosh-’em-op Tony Lazzeri and Jumping Joe Dugan.

  And finally they offered that heart-breaking pair of ball busters, George Herman Ruth and Henry Louis Gehrig.

  Did you ever see them play? Brother, you saw a ball team.

  You also saw as grand and mad and wild, and goofy a collection of baseball ivory as was ever collected together under one tent.

  This isn’t designed particularly as a Sunday School take for tiny tots, so I’ll tell you with considerable joy in the telling that the Yanks of those years were a drinking ball club. They like their likker. And they gave Miller Huggins many a headache. But drinks or no drinks, they won those pennants and those world series games, and they patted that apple.

  Mark Koenig told me of a series in Chicago. The boys had been in a slump. Miller Huggins read them the riot act about their drinking and threatened to fire any man caught smelling of anything stronger than lilac water.

  The boys loved Hug in their way, and his lectures always worked the first day. They swore off, and the next day played worse than ever. That night, Koenig said, you could see the boys sneaking out of their rooms at all hours and heading stealthily down the corridors and out of the hotel to return at dawn’s early light, bearing with them some fine, first class packages.

  But the next afternoon they were out of their slump and tearing into the hapless White Sox. The Yankee dugout smelled like a distillery, but Mister Huggins had eyes only for the relays of Sox pitchers who were being carted away one after the other, quietly gibbering. The little Miller also knew when to keep quiet.

  Or there is the charming story of the pitcher who shall be Nameless, who was caught by Hug coming into the hotel at four A.M. one morning plastered, though still able to stand up. However, it should be recorded that this was only because a blonde was supporting him on one side and a red head on the other.

  Huggins was an insomniac, made so by his worries as Yankee manager, and when he couldn’t sleep he would get up and go walking. It was through this that the encounter took place.

  Pitcher and Manager came face to face. Very quietly Huggins said, “Good morning, son.”

  The pitcher stared him right in the eye, smiled affably and said, “Hyyah, Hug!” They passed on.

  The next morning, Huggins called in brother Nameless, and let him have it. He bawled him out for the blonde, the carrot-top, both together, and for the condition he was in and said the next time that that happened it would cost him a fine and suspension.

  Nameless didn’t even argue. It was apparent that Hug had him dead to rights, color of female hair, quality of his breath and all. He just kept saying … “Okay, Hug. Okay. I’ll try. I’ll be all right.”

  When he got to the door at the end of the lecture, however, he turned around and said, “Hug, I’m gonna try to go straight. On the level. But there’s just one thing I wanna know. Who is the so-and-so stool pigeon on this club?”

  Those were the days. Drink, wench and clout the ball.

  And what was Lou Gehrig doing on a team like that? How did he fit in? What was he like?

  Why he was doing as he pleased. And it pleased him neither to drink, nor to wench, or to stay out late. And he nudged the pellet just the same, because life is like that. Some do and some don’t. Lou liked his straight. And the other guys respected him for it. And they didn’t kid him about it either. Because on a ball club, really to kid a guy you ought to be able to lick him in case he gets sore. And there wasn’t anybody on the outfit who cherished notions of pushing Lou Gehrig around. But besides, nobody wanted to. If nothing else, it was a liberal crowd. Every guy could live according to his own notions as long as he continued to pole that pill for the communal good. When baseball is bread and butter, you never question a man’s eccentricities as long as he continues to carry his weight and can hoist one into Railroad Street outside the park, when blue chips are down. I’m trying to give you a picture of those Yanks, and of Lou.

  And I am also trying to give you an unnamby-pamby picture of baseball as it is, or at least as it was in those days. It isn’t a game played for the sweet joy of sport by Sunday School book characters, but a rough, competitive game played as a profession and a business by a bunch of tough, hard bitted men who were and are just like any other groups of men. In a group of twenty or thirty players you find all kinds. That Lou Gehrig was an ascetic, practically, in his manner of living, was purely a matter of his own personal choice. No one actually demanded it of him.

  As a matter of fact, his wife relates, that once, and this was before they met, Lou was in a protracted slump and was miserable about it. Huggins who loved him like a son and who had an enormous influence upon his life, and all for the good, called him into his office, handed him a ten dollar bill and said … “For Pete’s sakes, Lou, go out and get yourself a couple of drinks and some entertainment. You need loosening up.”

  Huggins was against ball players drinking heavily, but he was a superb psychologist, and he knew the relaxing effect of an occasional bender.

  7

  THE BITTER IMPATIENT DAYS OF TRIAL

  Although Gehrig did not know it at the time he was farmed out to Hartford in the Eastern League for a couple of years, and in 1925, spent a lot of time sliding his pants up and down on the Yankee bench. Lou was and had been for some tim
e a carefully planned sparkplug in the new baseball machine that Miller Huggins was building to replace the worn-out one that had won pennants in 1921–2=3. Ruth was still the big siege gun, but the rest of the team was getting old. Teams fall apart that way in spots, because most Major League teams are part seasoned veterans and part peppery youngsters. When the veterans go, replacements must be found and it is in those periods that the big teams will be found out of the money.

  The team that took the field in 1925 at the beginning of the season was still the old Yankees whose infield consisted of Wallie Pipp, Pipp the Pickler, at first base, Aaron Ward at second, Deacon Everett Scott at short—the Scott who had hung up the consecutive games record of 1,307 games, which Gehrig broke August 17, 1933, and Jumping Joe Dugan at third.

  But a glimpse of the Yankee line-up that took the field against the Cards in the World Series of 1926, shows only Joe Dugan still holding his job in the infield. The new kid infield was in. Lou Gehrig was on first, Tony Lazzeri … Poosh-’em-op Tony, on second and Mark Koenig at short.

  This young infield had won the pennant for Huggins in one year, though it wasn’t sufficiently seasoned to take the world series too. That came later in ’27 and ’28, when it won eight straight world series games from the Pirates and the Cardinals.

  But when he chafed on the Yankee bench in 1925, Lou Gehrig, young and ambitious, had no picture of the long range view and the patient plans of such a master builder of championship ball teams as Miller Huggins. To Lou’s young, ambitious impatient eyes, Wallie Pipp, toiling out there on first base was a fixture, as solid and immovable as Gibraltar.