Iron man: the human being behind the statistics

Every baseball fan knows the Lou Gehrig story. Two thousand, one hundred and thirty consecutive games played, a record that stood for almost 60 years. The first player in the modern era to hit four home runs in one game, only to be cut down in his prime by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the deadly disease to which he gave his name. Jonathan Eig retells the familiar story in a different and more insightful way. His approach is not the usual baseball tale of hits and runs; instead, he attempts to get beyond Gehrig's great career to reach the complicated human being he really was.

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Eig portrays Gehrig as shy and insecure, always seeking authority, whether it was from his unemotional mother (who dominated him until he married at age 30) or from his Yankee managers, Miller Huggins and Joe McCarthy, who were substitute father figures. His wife, Eleanor Twitchell, effectively ran his life from their marriage in 1933 until his death eight years later. She also cultivated his reputation: She was adviser to the making of The Pride of the Yankees, the film that starred Gary Cooper as Gehrig and which garnered 11 Academy Award nominations in 1942.

Gehrig played in the shadow of two of the most colorful Yankee stars, Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio, both of whom were lionized by sportswriters. Gehrig never seemed to mind, however, and went about his business setting records. In many ways he was a perfect athlete for the Depression decade: patient, hard working, well behaved, someone who had climbed out of poverty. But despite his impressive credentials, fans never warmed to the diffident, colorless Gehrig until he developed the illness that ended his career in May 1939. Eig argues that ALS appeared earlier than previously believed, finding evidence of it in Gehrig's behavior as early as 1938 spring training. ALS humanized Gehrig, in Eig's view: A man who habitually spoke in baseball cliches, Gehrig was surprisingly eloquent when he bade farewell to the game by saying that he considered himself "the luckiest man on the face of the earth."

Gehrig never understood what he was fighting against: His wife and doctors decided that it was better to let him believe he had a chance to overcome his illness, which he battled with the same tenacity that characterized his play. In today's world of steroid-inflated statistics, it is difficult to remember what a gifted player Gehrig was. Despite having his career shortened by at least two or three years, he still finished with a lifetime batting average of .340, the third highest slugging average in baseball history, and 1,990 runs batted in. In seven seasons he drove in 150 or more runs, a record that is unlikely to be topped.

Luckiest Man

The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig

by Jonathan Eig

Simon & Schuster, 432 pp., $26

John P. Rossi is professor of history at La Salle University. His book, The 1964 Phillies: The Story of Baseball's Most Memorable Collapse, will be published this month.

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