For the first time in his playing life with the New York Yankees — through Prohibition, the Flapper Age, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression and the New Deal — Lou Gehrig, baseball’s Iron Horse, accepted a salary cut in the winter of 1939.
Gehrig’s off year in ’38 — he batted .295, close to 50 points off his lifetime pace — gave General Manager Ed Barrow the opening to decrease Gehrig’s pay to $36,000, about $3,000 less than he had received the previous year.
True to his style, Gehrig didn’t battle or threaten. He would just strive, he promised, to regain his form. If others, including his wife, Eleanor, privately thought he was slipping, he continued to reject such a notion.
In the first days at spring training camp in St. Petersburg, Gehrig worked hard on his body, convinced that zealous conditioning would heal whatever was ailing him.
But by mid-March, after 10 exhibition games, Gehrig was hitting barely over .100, with no extra-base hits. His reflexes seemed even slower than they had been in 1938.
Fans in Tampa, Bradenton and St. Pete yelled “one out” or “two out” when Gehrig walked to the plate.
Suspicions were rampant that Gehrig’s abilities had retreated so far over the winter that manager Joe McCarthy might have to think seriously about replacing him, despite Gehrig’s long streak of consecutive games.
“I began to fear that Lou might get hurt if I didn’t get him out of there,” McCarthy said.
In a batting practice, Joe DiMaggio watched in disbelief as Gehrig missed 19 straight pitches.
“They were all fastballs, too, the kind of pitches that Lou would normally hit into the next county,” DiMaggio said.
On another afternoon, as Gehrig was trying to put on his pants after a game, he fell down. When Pete Sheehy, the clubhouse attendant, and DiMaggio ran over to pick him up, Gehrig waved them away. He said he could get up by himself.
Gehrig’s sporadic slumps had always engendered good-natured needling. Now such joking ceased, for it was insensitive to shout, “Hey, old man,” at someone who was obviously suffering.
As the Yanks broke camp and headed north, Gehrig had played in 27 games without hitting a home run or a triple. The club had four exhibition games left with the Brooklyn Dodgers, who were touring with them.
In the first of those games, in Norfolk, Va., Gehrig had four hits, his highest output of the spring. Among those were two homers.
When the team arrived in New York, the news of Gehrig’s “revival,” reported dutifully in the papers, raised hopes that his silent spring had been a bad dream.
With such a powerful team — DiMaggio, Tommy Henrich, Bill Dickey, Charlie (King Kong) Keller, Joe Gordon, Red Rolfe and Frank Crosetti and pitchers like Red Ruffing, Lefty Gomez, Monte Pearson and Johnny Murphy — McCarthy felt he could afford to be patient with his captain.
When the season began at Yankee Stadium on April 20, Gehrig was at first base against the Red Sox. But what the fans saw, in Gehrig’s 2,123rd straight game, was scarcely recognizable.
The first time he batted, Gehrig received a rousing burst of applause, almost as if the fans were trying to tell Gehrig how much they wanted to see him recapture the glory. But when Lefty Grove walked DiMaggio intentionally to face Gehrig, reality struck home.
A few days later, with the Yankees playing the Athletics, George Caster, a Philadelphia right-hander, declined to pitch close to Gehrig.
“I was afraid,” Caster said, “that if I pitched him tight he wouldn’t have the reflexes to get out of the way. His body seemed to have slowed.”
On April 29 the Senators beat the Yanks 3-1. Gehrig singled in three at- bats against left-hander Ken Chase. It was the 2,721st — and final — hit of his career.
On Sunday, April 30, President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited New York to open the New York World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows. At Yankee Stadium, 24,000 chose to watch a ballgame instead.
Gehrig arrived early that day to work on his hitting. In batting practice he managed to hit a few balls that barely reached the right-field bleachers.
In infield practice Timmy Sullivan, the Yanks’ mascot, worked faithfully with Gehrig as his idol desperately tried to field ground balls.
For the fifth time in eight games, Gehrig went hitless, and the Senators won 3-2.
After the game, grumbling pervaded the clubhouse. Some players openly expressed doubt the team could win with Gehrig in the lineup.
Overhearing, Gehrig was shaken. That night he discussed his situation with Eleanor. She asked only if he still got satisfaction out of playing.
“How can I, when I’m hurting the team?” he said.
The Yankees had a day off before opening a series in Detroit on May 2, 1939, 50 years ago today.
When Gehrig arrived in his hotel room he decided at last to step down after 2,130 consecutive games, a mark that will probably remain as long as baseball is played.
Gehrig asked McCarthy to join him in his room. Knowing what Gehrig was going to tell him, McCarthy hated to listen.
“I’m benching myself, Joe,” Gehrig announced.
After a moment’s silence, McCarthy asked: “Why?”
“For the good of the team,” Gehrig said. “I just can’t seem to get going. Nobody has to tell me how bad I’ve been and how much of a drawback to the club. The time has come for me to quit.”
“You don’t have to quit,” McCarthy said. “Take some time off to rest. Maybe you’ll feel all right again.”
Gehrig went on to explain that an incident in the last home game had convinced him it was time to put up his spikes.
In the ninth inning a ball had been hit between the pitcher’s mound and first base. Murphy, the pitcher, had fielded it but had to wait for Gehrig to struggle to first to take the throw. It should have been an easy play.
“When Murphy came over to tell me what a nice play I’d made,” Gehrig said, “I knew it was time for me to get out.”
McCarthy understood. “All right, Lou,” he said. “I’ll put Dahlgren in today, but anytime you want to get back in, it’s your position.”
On that May 2 afternoon the Yankee clubhouse under the stands in Briggs Stadium was like a morgue.
Even before coach Art Fletcher tapped Babe Dahlgren on the shoulder to tell him he was starting at first base, the grapevine had tipped off the players. Most of them spoke in whispers as they started to dress for a game they wished would never take place.
“Good luck, Babe,” said Fletcher. In a state of near-shock, Dahlgren suited up and trotted out on the field to warm up. He noticed Gehrig, dedicated to the end, in the outfield chasing fungoes with the pitchers.
For an hour Gehrig worked with his reluctant body, as if he were trying to shake the demons loose. Then he walked dejectedly toward the dugout.
With photographers clamoring for pictures, Gehrig returned to the field to pose with Dahlgren. Even if Dahlgren felt it was time to make his own reputation, he regarded himself as a culprit; he looked into Gehrig’s eyes and saw tears.
“Come on, Lou,” Dahlgren said. “You better get out there. You’ve put me in a terrible spot.”
Gehrig tried to smile reassuringly at his successor. But the famous dimpled smile never came. Instead, he slapped Dahlgren on the back. “Go out there and knock in some runs.”
When the game was set to begin, Gehrig shuffled out with a Yankee lineup in his hand that excluded his name. Umpire Stephen Basil accepted it.
Then the announcement, to the 11,379 people in the ballpark, echoed over the public address system. “Dahlgren, first base,” the voice intoned.
These were Detroit fans, but they were also baseball fans. Most of them stood up and applauded. It went on for two minutes. His head down, Gehrig tipped his cap and disappeared into the dugout.
That Sunday’s New York Times ran a memorable photo of Gehrig sitting on the dugout steps, gazing wistfully out at the field. The line over the picture said:
Pitchers Once Feared His Bat.
Two years later, on the evening of June 2, 1941, Gehrig was dead, at 38, of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neuromuscular ailment in which the muscles atrophy and the patient becomes paralyzed.
To this day, ALS — now known as Lou Gehrig’s disease — is incurable.
