Our subject of this note was christened Heinrich Ludwig, after his father, in 1903. His mother had immigrated to the US only four years before. She almost immediately married Heinrich Ludwig, Sr., who had immigrated in 1888. Heinrich Ludwig, Jr., was the second of four children, and the only one to survive to adulthood.
The family lived in New York City and our subject entered Commerce High School, where he played football, baseball, and soccer. He led his school team to three straight soccer championships. Perhaps, though, he was best at baseball. In the first public baseball game that he was scheduled to appear in, he was so shy that he skipped out on the game. He said, "I went up to the stadium on a streetcar. When I got there and saw so many people going into the field, I was so scared that I turned around and went home on the streetcar." His teacher threatened to flunk him if he did not show up for the next game, so he went.
In the spring of 1920, the school's baseball team was selected to represent New York City in a "national championship" game with Chicago's top high school team. The game was played on Wrigley Field with more than 10,000 people attending. In the top of the ninth, with Commerce leading 8 to 6, our subject came to bat with the bases loaded. Our man hit a home run which added four runs to their eight. (In the previous major league season at Wrigley, only 18 home runs had been scored.) On returning to New York City, our hero was acclaimed "the Babe Ruth of the school yards".
On graduating from high school, he received a football scholarship to Columbia University, where he played both football and baseball. At the age of 20, he signed a contract with the New York Yankees. His mother was very unhappy about this, as she had wanted him to become an engineer.
Starting 1 June 1925, when he entered the majors as a pitch-hitter, until he retired, he played in 2,130 consecutive games, a record broken only in 1995 by Cal Ripkin, Jr.
By early 1939, our man showed symptoms of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerois (ALS) and was forced to retire. Yet, even as he retired, he could say, "Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." On 4 July 1939, his number (4) was permanently retired, a first for the Yankees.
He lived two more years, until two weeks shy of his 38th birthday. In 1942, the story of his life was made into a motion picture entitled "Pride of the Yankees". The disease which killed him, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerois, is known since then as Lou Gehrig's disease.
(Of course, our subject was Heinrich Ludwig Gehrig, Jr., Lou Gehrig !)
(Credit for this story goes to Robert and Barbara Selig who write for "
German Life
.")
(11 May 04)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.