Double Legacy Of The Iron Horse

After a dismal spring training Gehrig opened the season at first base, and the streak continued for eight more games. But they were sad affairs. In the first game of the year, against the Boston Red Sox, the opposing pitcher, Lefty Grove, walked DiMaggio in order to pitch to the punchless Gehrig. It was an incredible thing to witness; no pitcher had ever wanted to see Gehrig come to the plate. It was the ultimate insult, sure proof that the Gehrig of legend was no more. To make matters worse, the strategy worked. Gehrig hit into a double play.

Over the course of those final eight games Gehrig got just four hits—all singles—and one RBI, while batting .143. The end came after a game against the Washington Senators on April 30. Four times Gehrig came to bat with men on base, and each time he failed to get a hit. He stranded a total of five base runners as the Yankees lost by a score of 3-2. For Gehrig the RBI man, that was enough. The next scheduled game was in Detroit on May 2, and for the first time in 14 years the Yankees took the field without Lou Gehrig in the lineup. "It's tough to see your mates on base, have a chance to win a ball game and not be able to do anything about it," Gehrig said that day.

An overenthusiastic response by his teammates to a routine play during the game with the Senators was also a factor in Gehrig's decision to sit down. " Bill Dickey, Joe Gordon and the pitcher all got around me," Gehrig said, "slapped me on the back and said, 'Great going, Lou. Nice stop, big boy.' They meant it to be kind, but it hurt worse than any bawling out I ever received in baseball. They were saying 'great stop' because I had fielded a grounder. I decided then and there I would ask McCarthy to take me out of the lineup."

The end of Gehrig's consecutive-game streak was national news for days as sportswriters around the country analyzed his career and his sudden fall from the top. The consensus was that Gehrig had simply worn himself out, that he had played too many games without a rest. DiMaggio opined that Gehrig had squeezed as many as 19 years of work into his 14 full seasons in the big leagues. A Boston Sunday Globe story quoted a "leading Boston osteopath" who theorized that " Gehrig's case might be due to some toxic condition started by a case of grippe in the winter." In the same article a psychologist said that a hitting slump such as the one Gehrig was experiencing when he ended the streak fit the description of "an occupational neurosis." The article continued, "When this came on top of worry about his record, self-examination as to whether he was earning his high salary, and doubt whether he should continue the daily grind, it is easy to see how Lou—even-tempered as he is—might have been thrown temporarily into a nervous and mental tangle." Another theory was that Gehrig had "caught" something during an all-star tour of Japan in the fall of 1934. A doctor who had been treating Gehrig for some time was convinced that it was a gallbladder problem, while Gehrig's wife secretly feared that her husband had a brain tumor.

Gehrig himself attributed his problems to the cool weather of the early season and to the lumbago that had been bothering him off and on for years. He was looking forward to the warmer months, fully expecting to get back into the game. "My immediate plan is to try to regain my old form," he said a week into his new life in the dugout. "Sitting on the bench I have a lot of strange thoughts and peculiar sensations. But I do not sit there with the idea that it is all over and Gehrig is ready for the boneyard. Not by a long shot. Folks have been terribly nice to me. Newspaper accounts of my snapping the string said marvelous things about me, and made Eleanor and me cry like kids. But the idea that I am a subject for a baseball obituary is all wrong."

Gehrig never played in another regular-season game. His last appearance as a baseball player was a three-inning stint in an exhibition game with the Kansas City Blues, a Yankee farm team, in early June. From Kansas City, Gehrig went to Rochester, Minn., and checked into the Mayo Clinic. He knew something was wrong, and he wanted to know exactly what it was.

In the library of the Baseball Hall of Fame are Gehrig's scrapbooks, two huge volumes containing newspaper clippings, postcards, snapshots, letters and telegrams. The black fabric covers are embossed with just LOU GEHRIG in faded gold. The scrapbooks are arranged chronologically, and deep in the second volume is the single sheet of paper that makes all the rest of the collected material seem so sad. It is the press release issued on June 19, 1939 ( Gehrig's 36th birthday) by the Mayo Clinic at the end of its evaluation of the ballplayer. It is a masterpiece of understatement. Its five sentences officially end his career and foretell the end of his life. It reads, in its entirety:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

This is to certify that Mr. Lou Gehrig has been under examination at the Mayo Clinic from June 13 to June 19, 1939, inclusive.

After a careful and complete examination, it was found that he is suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This type of illness involves the motor pathways and cells of the central nervous system and in lay terms is known as a form of chronic poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis).