Trying to sound optimistic, Gehrig told his teammates that he had faith in his doctors and could beat the disease. The truth was far more sobering. ALS is a grave illness. Gehrig’s life expectancy was now shorter, and there was no doubt his playing days were over.
The Yankees originally did not intend to commemorate the end of his glorious career. His teammates bought him a fishing rod, and that was it. But when the public clamored for the chance to show its support, the club scheduled “Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day” for July 4, 1939, and invited the 1927 team and other former players.
More than 61,000 fans filled Yankee Stadium that day. A doubleheader against Washington was scheduled. Colorful bunting hung from the stadium façade, as if it were a World Series game. More than a dozen former Yankees were on hand, including Tony Lazzeri, Bob Meusel, Waite Hoyt, and Everett Scott. They crammed into the home clubhouse before the first game and joked with the current players, creating a raucous scene. Gehrig almost fainted from the heat and swirl of noise. He retreated to McCarthy’s office for half an hour, caught his breath, and came out gamely apologizing for not bringing a keg of beer.
During the first game, Gehrig sat quietly on the bench. The former players received applause as they found their seats behind home plate. Ruth made a grand entrance in the fourth inning, resplendent in a double-breasted cream-colored suit and white shirt with no tie.
After the game, the former players, minus Gehrig, gathered on the field and walked to the foot of a flagpole beyond the outfield fence. An army band played as a 1927 world championship pennant went up the flagpole. The fans cheered, and the players returned to home plate, where a microphone stand had been erected.
Gehrig was in the clubhouse. It was a sweltering, sunny day. He could not take the heat. Someone went to the clubhouse and told him to come to the field. When he appeared, his uniform belt cinched tight around his gaunt waist, the fans loosed a shattering roar. “Never in his 14 years had Lou ever heard such applause,” one newspaper reported.
A ceremony began with remarks from the emcee, sportswriter Sid Mercer. New York’s mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, praised Gehrig in a speech, as did the U.S. postmaster general, James Farley. McCarthy cried when he recounted the day Gehrig’s streak ended. Ed Barrow, the Yankees’ general manager, made his first appearance on the stadium field after running the team for two decades and announced that Gehrig’s uniform number, 4, would be retired. No Yankee had ever received such an honor.
Gehrig stood in front of the speakers with his head bowed. He appeared to weep softly at times and dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief as he listened to the testimonials and received such gifts as a watch, ring, silver cup, silver serving set, and, most memorably, a trophy from his teammates with a poetic inscription written by New York Times columnist John Kieran:
We’ve been to the wars together;
We took our foes as they came;
And always you were the leader,
And ever you played the game.
Idol of cheering millions,
Records are yours by sheaves;
Iron of frame they hailed you;
Decked you with laurel leaves.
But higher than that we hold you,
We who have known you best;
Knowing the way you came through
Every human test.
Let this be a silent token
Of lasting Friendship’s gleam,
And all that we’ve left unspoken;
Your Pals of the Yankee Team.
Ruth stepped to the microphone. He and Gehrig had stopped speaking, but the bad blood between them was forgotten now. Ruth had told an interviewer he felt awful about Gehrig’s situation. In a brief speech, Ruth praised the 1927 team as “the best the Yankees ever had” and told Gehrig to relax and go catch some fish.
When Ruth gave up the microphone, no one was left to speak. But the fans wanted to hear Gehrig. “We want Lou! We want Lou!” they chanted. Gehrig had hoped to get away without speaking, but there was no chance of that happening. He stepped to the microphone. The stadium fell silent as he gathered his thoughts with his head bowed. When he spoke, his voice was thick with emotion.
“For the past two weeks, you’ve been reading about a bad break. Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
The crowd roared. Gehrig waited for the noise to subside and continued.
“I have been in ballparks for 17 years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. When you look around, wouldn’t you consider it a privilege to associate yourself with such fine-looking men as are standing in uniform in the ballpark today? Sure I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with such a grand little fellow as Miller Huggins? To have spent the next nine years with that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure I’m lucky.
“Who wouldn’t feel honored to room with such a grand guy as Bill Dickey? When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift—that’s something. When the groundskeepers and office staff and writers and old timers and players and concessionaires all remember you with trophies—that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles against her own daughter—that’s something. When you have a father and mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body—it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed—that’s the finest I know.
“So I close in saying that I might have had a bad break, but I have an awful lot to live for.”
The crowd roared. He was done. Ruth stepped forward and wrapped an arm around him. Both men smiled as photographers snapped pictures, Ruth looking robust and positively kingly next to Gehrig’s thin, pale frame.
The press box was crammed with sportswriters from around the country. The Washington Post’s Shirley Povich wrote that he “saw strong men weep” as Gehrig spoke. Charlie Segar, writing in the New York Daily Mirror, called it “the most touching scene ever enacted on a diamond.” The New York World-Telegram’s Dan Daniel, who had covered Gehrig’s entire career, said it was “a stirring testimonial which, in its manifestations of loyalty and appreciation and its emotional aspects, never before had been approached in the major leagues.”
The New York Herald Tribune’s Richard Vidmer wrote that the scene honored “a truly great sportsman who could take his triumphs with sincere modesty and could face tragedy with a smile.” Vidmer continued: “Gehrig was one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived but . . . stood for something finer . . . everything that makes sports important on the American scene.”
Within two years, baseball’s Ironman was dead.
18
Ironmen
IS IT REALLY A GOOD IDEA?
By playing for the Chicago Cubs against the Philadelphia Phillies on May 21, 1968, at Wrigley Field, outfielder Billy Williams ran his consecutive-game streak to 731 games. No major league outfielder had ever played in so many games in a row. Infielders such as Lou Gehrig, Everett Scott, Joe Sewell, and George Pinkney had dominated baseball’s endurance tale until now.
The Phillies’ Richie Ashburn had established a benchmark for outfielders with a run of 730 straight games in the 1950s, and in a coincidence, Ashburn was at Wrigley Field to see Williams pass him. Long retired from playing, he now worked as a Phillies broadcaster. “I didn’t even know I had a record until I read a squib in the paper a few days ago,” Ashburn said. “They didn’t break endurance marks down by position when I played.”
The game was halted when Williams came to bat in the bottom of the first. An announcement about his setting a record was made, and the meager matinee crowd of 4,442 fans applauded. Williams doffed his cap, stepped into the box, and tapped a weak ground ball to the pitcher.
After the game, Williams, a four-time All-Star at age 29, admitted having doubts about his habit of playing entire seasons without rest. “There’s no doubt I’d get tired toward the end of a season. Then my hitting definitely would fall off,” he said, referring to his experiences since 1963, when his streak began.
Actually, in 1965 and 1967, he hit higher in August and September than he did earlier in the season. He did fall off late in the season in 1966, hitting .221 in August and .250 in September, at the end of a campaign in which he hit .276 overall.
But regardless of what his statistics indicated, Williams clearly wondered whether he should play every day, mostly because his goal potentially conflicted with the team’s goal. “Records like this, you don’t get paid for them,” Williams said. “You’re paid for how you perform. And by trying to keep up the record, I not only could hurt myself, but also the ballclub. I think we have a real shot at the pennant this year, and I want to be strong in that September stretch when they need me.”
Williams’s comments raised fundamental questions about consecutive-game streaks. Was it really best for a player not to sit out at least a game or two every year? Would he perform better if he occasionally rested to recharge his batteries? Was he being selfish in seeking this odd form of individual glory? What was the point?
Seriously, what was the point?
Doubts about consecutive-game streaks had existed since they were deemed relevant and became recognized in the 1920s. Miller Huggins wanted to try other shortstops for several years before he ended Everett Scott’s streak in 1925. Scott himself later wondered aloud why he cared about playing in so many games in a row. Babe Ruth mocked Gehrig for doing it. A Detroit columnist lambasted Gehrig for contriving to keep his streak going in 1934.
The underlying assumptions of the criticisms were (a) an Ironman streak was not important to a team’s fortunes, and (b) the player probably would benefit from taking a day off.
The charge of irrelevance was difficult to refute. If you make headlines for hitting home runs, winning games on the mound, or achieving excellence in any of the game’s many endeavors, you have improved your team’s chances of winning. But the correlation between playing every day and winning is not obvious. You could go hitless for weeks while advancing a playing streak. Did your team benefit?
In Gehrig’s case, given his offensive prowess, it was easily argued that the Yankees benefited from his playing every day for more than 14 years. Certainly, no player with similar power-hitting potential was going to come off the Yankees’ bench and replace him.
Ripken faced searing criticism for continuing to play through prolonged batting slumps that, his critics believed, might have ended had he taken some days off. There is statistical evidence supporting the contention. Over his career, he hit .294 in June, .286 in July, .275 in August, and .262 in September and October, so his average dropped during the year. From that, one could conclude that he did tire and was not always at his best in the season’s final weeks.
But Ripken staunchly believed the Orioles benefited from his presence every day, regardless of how he performed at the plate, and his managers and most of his teammates supported him. The case can be made that his Ironman streak was to the team’s advantage.
Would occasional rest have made Ripken or Gehrig more productive? Who knows? The benefit of a day off is one of baseball’s enduring mysteries. Many believe it helps. Players “definitely need an occasional break from the mental stress presented by the game,” Tim McCarver said. But Ripken disagrees. “I never thought you could solve your problems by not playing,” he said.
On August 10, 1963, the Orioles’ Brooks Robinson had played in 462 straight games. It was the longest active streak in the majors. But his manager, Billy Hitchcock, gave him the night off against the Washington Senators. “I wasn’t hitting. The thinking was, ‘OK, sit out a game and watch; maybe you’ll come back better,’” Robinson recalled years later.
He wound up entering the game as a pinch hitter in the eighth inning, and Hitchcock put him back in the lineup the next day and played him every day for another three weeks. Then, on September 2, Hitchcock held him out of the second game of a doubleheader in Boston, and he never got in, ending his streak at 483 games. That stood as the Orioles’ franchise record until Ripken came along.
Robinson was hitting .259 when he sat out the game in Boston, and it was a brief respite, as he returned to the lineup the next day and played in every game for the rest of the season. His average dropped to .251 by the time the season was over, so sitting out a game did not help him at the plate.
“When you didn’t play, the fact is, you still came to the park, put on the uniform, and took infield. You just didn’t play. Big deal,” Robinson said. “I mean, sometimes I would sit out a few games and come back just as horrible as I was before. But then there were other times when I sat out a game or two and came back totally refreshed.”
Does a day off help?
“I don’t know that anyone has the answer to that,” Robinson said.
As America moved from the buttoned-down 1950s into the psychedelic 1960s, baseball experienced a similarly seismic swing. It had undergone significant changes by the time Billy Williams began his playing streak. The major leagues had expanded from 16 to 20 teams. The regular season was eight games longer. Teams flew between cities when on the road. As of 1965, one team even played indoors, in a climate-controlled dome, on plastic grass. The Dodgers were in Los Angeles, the Giants in San Francisco. African American stars such as Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, and Frank Robinson dominated the National League.
The challenge of playing a full season of games was no harder, but different. During his streak, Williams would play in California, Texas, Canada, and indoors. Gehrig never experienced any of that. A slender, circumspect African American from Whistler, Alabama, Williams would help fans grow more accustomed to seeing black players wearing major league uniforms.
His original deal with the Cubs, signed in 1956, contained no signing bonus, just a celebratory cigar for his father and guarantees of $150 a month and $2.25 a day for meals. On his rise through the minors, Williams briefly quit the game when several restaurant doors were slammed in his face in San Antonio, in 1959. But that year, he had the opportunity to play every day because his manager, Grady Hatton, a former major leaguer, did not believe in platoons. A left-handed hitter, Williams fared well against pitchers from both sides. By 1961, he was the Cubs’ starting left fielder.
When he struggled early that season and was benched, “it gave me a chance to take stock, and I vowed that when I got back in the lineup, they would have to tear my uniform off to get me out again,” Williams said for this book. He wound up hitting .278 with 25 home runs and 86 runs batted in, a performance that earned him the National League Rookie of the Year award.
The next year, he still had to stave off a half-dozen challengers in spring training to keep his job. The Cubs handed him nothing. “You had to be tough. There were always good players in the minors who were ready to take your job if you slipped. You didn’t want to be the next Wally Pipp,” Williams said. “The thinking was, ‘If you take yourself out of the lineup, even just for a day, someone will take your job.’”
That was especially true for black players. Although baseball was becoming more open-minded, some teams used few black players, and others did not mind replacing them if the opportunity arose. Williams vowed not to give the Cubs that chance. He became a consistent contributor, dependable at the plate, solid in the field, an everyday presence. While sitting out just two games in 1962, he hit .298 with 22 homers and 92 runs batted in. In 1963, he missed one game.
The Cubs were also-rans. After making six World Series appearances between 1918 and 1945, all ending in defeat, they finished in the National League’s second division for 15 straight seasons. In the 1950s, having the chance to watch Ernie Banks, their All-Star shortstop, was about the only benefit to rooting for them. For several seasons in the early 19
60s, they tried using a rotation of “head coaches” rather than one manager, but they continued to lose.
The arrival of Williams, third baseman Ron Santo, and outfielder Lou Brock brought hope. Batting in front of Banks, Williams hit .312 with 33 home runs in 1964 while playing in every game. He was even better the next year. By the end of the 1965 season, he had played in 332 straight games.
Ironically, though his baseball era was marked by change, Williams was on the last major league team to play its home games during the day. The Cubs would not install lights at Wrigley Field until 1988. That meant Williams, like Gehrig, played mostly in midday heat, making his consecutive-game streak all the more impressive, Tim McCarver observed.
“It’s a lot of games in a row, especially when you’re playing during the day at Wrigley Field, as Billy did,” said McCarver, who played dozens of games against Williams. “Everything after his era took place when night games became prevalent and guys were no longer playing in the heat of the day all the time. With Billy, you should probably tack on another 300 games to his number to get to the point of how difficult it was for him to do what he did.”
In 1966, the Cubs hired Leo Durocher as their manager. “Leo the Lip” had previously managed the Dodgers and Giants in the 1940s and 1950s, becoming a controversial staple of the New York baseball scene. Earning a reputation as a loudmouth who stood up to authority, Durocher, now 61 years old, had been out of the majors for a decade but had lost none of his feistiness. “I’m not the manager of an eighth-place team,” he said when the Cubs hired him. He was right. The Cubs finished 10th in 1966.
The Streak Page 25
