Lou Gehrig Page 4

  Once, when Huggins was shipping some ivory off to St. Paul, Gehrig invaded Hug’s room in the hotel, his bag all packed, and begged Hug to send him too. He was asking to be sent from a great Major League club, back to the minors, only so that he might be able to play ball. He was tired of sitting on the bench.

  From Huggins that night, he got a lecture he never forgot. Hug said …

  “Lou, I’m not going to send you off to St. Paul. You’re going to stay right on that bench and learn baseball. You may think you know as much as those fellers out there on the field, but you don’t. You got a lot to learn and there’s no way to learn it right now except on the bench. Those fellers out there had to do the same thing when they were young. Your turn will come. I want you to sit next to me for a while on the bench. I’ll help you.”

  It put an entirely new light on things for Lou. The bench no longer was a penance and a trial. It became a school. Sitting next to Huggins, he learned to appraise every batter that came to the plate, around the circuit, to memorize the placement of his hits, to note where Pipp played for him, how the infield lined up to handle him.

  He learned to watch the pitchers, how they pitched, what they pitched, what their strategy was in a tight spot, their mannerism, little telltale give-away motions towards first, in short anything and everything that would help him to play the game when his time came. Baseball, he discovered, wasn’t simply getting out there and stroking the ball out of the park and catching balls thrown at him. It was a painstaking profession, an exhausting and never ending study.

  His chance came sooner than expected. In May, Pipp was beaned in batting practice and thereafter became subject to violent headaches. This fact gives rise to the story, probably apocryphal that one day when he complained of his head, Hug said … “Okay, Wallie … take a couple of aspirins and a seat on the bench,” and sent Lou out to First Base.

  At any rate, on June first, 1925, Lou Gehrig replaced Wallie Pipp. Thereafter for fourteen consecutive years and 2,130 consecutive games, he was never off First Base, except one game which he started as shortstop merely to be in the line-up and preserve his great consecutive games record at a time when he was bent double with lumbago.

  But the story of what happened to Lou, that first game and what he said, does happen to be true. Running down to second base, he got into the line of the last half of a double play. The ball hit him squarely on the forehead and knocked him senseless.

  They doused him with water and when he came to, he was asked whether he wanted to get out of the game. Lou looked up grimly and said …

  “Hell no! It’s taken me three years to get into this game. It’s going to take more than a crack on the head to get me out.”

  How prophetic, tragically prophetic, his words were. His magnificent record of play survived beanings, fractures of toes and fingers, fevers, torn tendons, turned ankles, pulled muscles, lumbago, colds, and a host of minor mishaps that would have kept an average man in bed. He succumbed only to the crippling effects of an insidious and fatal disease, and even that he fought off in defiance of nature and the laws of medicine, for longer than it was thought possible.

  But we are yet with young Lou on the threshold of success, with Huggins sending him out onto the field with … “O. K., Lou, go on out there and play first. Hustle all the time, but don’t get excited and do the best you can.”

  Hustle all the time!

  That was the philosophy by which Lou Gehrig lived and died. I asked Ty Cobb for his definition of a “hustling” ball player. In his slow drawl, he said … “A hustlin’ ball player is a feller who never lets up for a minute, never gives his body a rest from trying. He’s out there every second of the time playing as hard as he can, no matter how many runs he’s ahead. He don’ know what it means to take it easy and loaf along. He’s ALWAYS working. Lou Gehrig was the hustlinest ball player I ever saw, and I admired him for it. When I first saw him break in the line-up, as a rookie, I went and told him just that.”

  So Lou had made the Yankees. Then he set out to learn how to play first base. He was so anxious to learn, because he was such a clumsy Tanglefoot around that bag. He took advice from anyone and everyone, even Blind Tom, which is the ball players charm-name for the umpire.

  Billy Evans, umpiring at First Base one time noticed a serious flaw in Lou’s play shortly after he broke into the line-up. Bill took a chance of drawing a rebuke, because ball players were pretty touchy where umpires are concerned, but he said … “Young fellow … you’re putting the wrong foot back on the bag.”

  Lou smiled at him and said … “Thanks, Mr. Evans. Watch me on the next play.”

  He got the proper foot back, but had to hesitate and think before he could do it. The next morning at ten o’clock he had Charley O’Leary the coach, out of bed and down to the field, practicing, until it became automatic.

  Poor O’Leary. Gehrig practiced him ragged. There was so much he had to learn about fielding his position. Day in and day out, he worked every morning from ten o’clock until game time. He was weak on balls thrown into the dirt. He made Charley throw balls at him into the dirt until O’Leary’s tongue was hanging out. Lou did nothing naturally. Everything came the hard and tortuous way. Practice, practice, practice until he did it right, and then practice some more to keep it right.

  In the meantime, the Yankees were going places. And so was Gehrig, and with him his family.

  These were great days for Mom, for Lou took care of her.

  He more than took care of her. He idolized her. He brought her into the publicity lime-light with him as his best girl and his sweetheart. He bought her a fine house in New Rochelle with his World Series earnings, and made her mistress of it. Whenever anybody asked Lou about a girl or whether he had a sweetheart he would say … “Yes, my Mom.” And he would mean it. His early life had so molded him. Now, even in the growing days of his success, he was girl shy. His mother was all he wanted. He did not realize it, but this was to cause him heartache later when the thing happened he did not ever believe or dream would happen … that he would fall happily in love.

  8

  LOU AND BABE AND THE YANKS—ONWARDS AND UPWARDS

  But the time for the love story is not yet, though it must be told soon, because from now on the tale of Lou Gehrig is a continuous upward climb to fame and success beyond his dreams, the dreams of his mother, and certainly the wildest fancies of the sports writers who first saw him come up to the league as an awkward big, sterned, dimple cheeked Dutchman.

  And did he rise! In 1925 a benchwarming rookie. In 1926 a hard hitting regular playing in a world series on a championship team. And in 1927 he was already daring to challenge Babe Ruth for the home run championship. Through half the season he ran neck and neck with the Great Man, homer for homer, until at the end Ruth pulled away. That was the year that George Herman set his record of 60 home runs. Gehrig scared or pushed him into it. The Babe got the credit all right, and in the final analysis it was he who had to lay the ash to those horserind balls, and the number two guy is just another fellow in the race. But it was Lou not only who made him do it out of sheer rivalry and competitive spirit, but who helped him to do it physically.

  The boys who write the sports stories knew what was going on and who was doing what. On October 12, 1927, they voted Lou Gehrig the most valuable player in the American League.

  You see, it was Lou Gehrig who forced the pitchers to pitch to Babe Ruth. Ever since Huggins had acquired the sensationally slugging Babe and the pitchers in self defense began to take some of the sensation out of him by walking him more than any batter has ever been walked before in the history of baseball, the little Miller had been looking for a Number 4 to bat behind Babe’s No. 3. When Lou compiled his wonderful home run record with Hartford, Hug’s head rested easy on his pillow o’ nights, because he knew he was getting the answer to his prayers.

  In 1926, the American League pitchers were unconvinced about Gehrig’s hitting ability and still kept pitching those f
our wide ones to the Babe in times of crisis. Then Lou would come up and bust the lemon out of the county and there would go your old ball game.

  By 1927 word went around the League … don’t pass the Babe to get at Gehrig. Bad medicine. So they had to pitch to Babe. And the Babe got sixty home runs. But Lou got the valuable player award.

  Would you like to know the true relationship between Ruth and Gehrig in those fine, exciting, glittering days. They loved one another. Or rather Lou sincerely adored Ruth, admired him, hero-worshipped him and thought him a wonderful baseball player and an amusing man. The Babe liked Lou insofar as he was capable of loving anyone. It was not until much, much later that they fell out.

  Babe used to order Lou around and get waited on by him, or send him to fetch. Lou was such a self-effacing and modest man that he saw nothing humiliating in such service, which automatically made it non-humiliating. The Babe was never much on remembering names or telephone numbers … he couldn’t remember the names of the guys playing on his own team, and so Lou used to be charged with calling up the gals for Babe in the various towns on the circuit, if the King felt in the mood for a little gayety. The Babe’s lusty love of life, his appetites and his prowess with wine, women and food was always a source of enormous amusement to Lou. He just didn’t care about taking part, because that is the kind of a man he happened to be. They got on excellently well together, once even rooming together (an idea of Hug’s who hoped that Lou would hold Babe down a little). But two more opposite types were never on any one ball club.

  With regard to their rivalry, and the way Babe felt about it, an article appeared in Liberty in 1933, signed by Lou Gehrig in which Lou quotes Babe Ruth as saying to him during a confidential mood in 1927 at the time of their home run race … “Say, young fellow, there’s a lot of fun in this thing but the money is the thing we’re after. It’s all over there…” and here he pointed to the boundaries of the Yankee Stadium … “Back of those fences! That’s where the money is. The more balls we hit over the wall, the more world series we’ll get. Suppose we forget each other and remember that.”

  It sounds like the kind of thing the Babe might have said. But also remember that the Babe did hit sixty that year. There is no doubt in my mind that great competitor that Ruth was, he felt the sting of Gehrig’s youthful drive keenly. And in later years when Gehrig surpassed him in everything but home run hitting and had become the darling of the press, while Ruth was slipping, I am sure that he grew a little jealous of him. What would that be but human? And what was Babe if not intensely human at all times?

  They were a brutal crew of ball wreckers, those Yanks, and they did fabulous things.

  Picture yourself a pitcher trying to get by Murderer’s Row. First up was Combs, a sharp eyed hitter, long legged and fast as a whippet. One mistake and you’d have Combs sitting on first. Koenig was up next, a precision machine at getting a man along to second with hit or sacrifice. And by that time you were shaking anyway, because Babe Ruth was approaching. And if you got by Ruth you had to whip Gehrig who was even more dangerous because whereas Babe was just as apt to strike out as hit a home run, Lou was a wonderful all-around hitter. And then you still couldn’t relax a tired arm or quivering nerve, because you got Bob Meusel after Gehrig, and Tony Lazzeri who was also no slouch with his funny sliding swing that could park a ball in the bleachers. Then came Bengough, or Collins, the catchers. All the Yankee pitchers could hit, especially Waite Hoyt. And then it started all over again.

  Nineteen twenty seven was the year that the Yanks went to Pittsburgh to play the Pirates in a world series. The Pirates had the Waner Boys and were cocky. To deflate them a little, Huggins sent Ruth and Gehrig into the batting cage to indulge in a little pre-game hitting practice. Babe and Lou at Miller’s suggestion put on one of the greatest hitting shows ever seen when they knocked pitch after pitch over the fence, over the bleachers and over the roof. Of course a batting practice pitcher was serving them up and putting them right down the middle, but it was the terrible demonstration of power that broke the spirit of the Pirates before they ever took the field. They lost the series in straight games.

  The next year, the Yanks met St. Louis again and beat them four straight with Lou and Babe blasting the Redbirds into nervous wrecks with a bombardment of home runs. Lou got four home runs, the Babe three. The Babe got all three of his in one game, the last. Two of his, Lou got in one game. He was shooting for Babe’s mark of three in one game, to please his mother who was in the stands, but the St. Louis pitcher walked him the last two times.

  9

  “STRIKE OUT YOU BIG GOOF”—IT WAS LOVE!

  Life went on. Lou gained in stature and ability. His mother kept house for him, and continued to play the role of his sweetheart. And he seemed to be a boy who was happy and content with life.

  He WAS happy too, but those who knew him in those years and understood him knew also that he was a lonely boy. His pleasures were few. He loved to go fishing, and he used to come home and take his mother fishing with him off New Rochelle, or drive out to Long Island and fish for flounders.

  But somehow, the truest picture of the loneliness that was in his soul I get from the friend of his who told me that in those days he used to go up to Rye Beach where there was an amusement park and ride on the roller coaster all by himself for hours.

  He just didn’t go for girls, though he occasionally took one out to the movies. Shortly before he died, Miller Huggins asked Lou why he didn’t find some nice girl, marry her and have a home. Lou’s answer was typical. He didn’t think he would ever find a girl who would have him. He was content with his mother. No girl would possibly want to have a guy like him.

  Hug’s death in 1929 came as a great shock to Lou and he found himself lonelier than ever. Joe McCarthy who succeeded Huggins as Yankee Manager was always fond of Lou and became a great friend, but there was something paternal about his relation with Huggins.

  Time passed. Murderer’s Row gave way to the Bronx Bombers. The Yankee line-up now read … Combs, Sewell, Ruth, Gehrig, Lazzeri, Dickey, Chapman and Crosetti. McCarthy was setting up his first championship team and it was built around the slugging of Lou Gehrig now, more than the power of Ruth, which was beginning to wane a little.

  In 1932, the Yankees won the Championship again. That was the year when on July 3rd, in Philadelphia, Lou Gehrig hit four home runs in one game. And in the fall, Lou Gehrig was the undisputed hero of the world series in which the Yanks beat the Cubs four straight, and Babe Ruth made his last and most dramatic bid for immortality by pointing out to the Cubs pitcher the exact spot in centerfield where he was going to paste the next service for a home run. And then doing it.

  It was so typical of the Ruth-Gehrig overshadowing that by a single gesture, Ruth made everybody forget that Gehrig hit two home runs that day, both off the first pitch delivered by Root, Cub star. Lou’s second home run followed right on the heels of Babe’s dramatic move. Nobody even saw that one.

  Even if he was still somewhat under Babe’s shadow, Gehrig had the recognition of the ball players and the sports writers. He was getting more money each year. And the more money he got, and the more fame, the more lonely he grew too. There was no one with whom to share it, no one who could really rejoice with him. The big man, now in his twenty-ninth year was starved for affection.

  But he was just one year away from meeting the girl who was destined to give him the happiest and richest years of his life.

  Eleanor, however, had seen Lou several times before they met. And she tells it charmingly:

  “I first saw Lou Gehrig in the summer of 1932,” Eleanor Gehrig told me. “I hated him. I hated all the Yankees. I was a White Sox rooter. I sat there in the ball park and hoped Gehrig would fall down and break a leg. Once I yelled at him, ‘Strike out, you big goof!’”

  In this manner began the love story of Lou and Eleanor Gehrig, though they did not meet until sometime later.

  Eleanor Twitchell was born in Chicago in 1905, of a
family of considerable means. Her father was the caterer for the Park system in Chicago and had the concession for refreshments in five large parks. She was brought up in an atmosphere of comparative wealth … her family owned three cars, horses, city and country homes.

  She was pretty in a fresh, round-faced sort of way with rich brown hair and sweet eyes. At 23 she was a gay, light hearted creature with considerable impish humor, many friends and nothing to do but go horseback-riding, play golf and go to parties. She was fond of music, had studied the piano and after leaving school, continued an interest in applied psychology, which interest she carefully concealed from the gay, irresponsible crowd of pre-1928 playboys with which she surrounded herself.

  The crash of 1929 wrecked the family fortunes and blew her gay, dizzy, play-world out from under her.

  Before the smoke of explosion had cleared and the debris came drifting back to earth, Eleanor Twitchell had popped herself into a secretarial school. It was her own idea. Everything she did from then on was her own idea. And they were ideas that had as a basis an instinct for sound and simple common sense and understanding of values. She moved quietly over from play-girl to working girl overnight.

  When Lou Gehrig was first introduced to her at a party in Chicago, in 1933, Eleanor had a secretarial job with the lighting engineer of the World’s Fair in Chicago. Babe Ruth was there as well as a few other ball players. Eleanor remembers that she was rather impressed with the all-over gargantuan qualities of George Herman Ruth. Of Gehrig she neither saw nor remembered much. That, you see, was one of the characteristics of the pattern of Lou Gehrig’s life. Nobody much saw or remembered his deeds or personality as long as Babe Ruth was around.

  Later in 1933, at another gathering they met again. And this time something happened to the quiet, self-conscious athlete. He noticed Eleanor Twitchell. Something about her called to something within him and he tried to be with her during the evening. But each time he managed to get to her side, something intervened. Another swain moved Eleanor away, a bridge game was started, or there would be dancing.