← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 17845 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2005-04-18
2005-04-18 18:21 | User Profile
If you think this might be more starry-eyed press release than warts-and-all biography, just consider the way he comported himself - and read the text of Lou's letter to his wife (an authenticated document) - and then think about the ballplayer of today. Sometimes there's a reason legends are legends.
[url]http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/story/300608p-257361c.html[/url] [B][SIZE=4]The Iron Horse's final days [/SIZE] [/B]
[I]From "LUCKIEST MAN," by Jonathan Eig. Copyright é 2005 by Jonathan Eig. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc., NY. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc. [/I]
The Yankees arrived in Detroit on the morning of May 2 and checked into the Book-Cadillac Hotel. Bob Murphy, a writer for the Detroit Times, pen and pad in hand, approached Gehrig in the lobby.
"Off to a slow start," the reporter said. It wasn't much of a question, but it was enough to get a response.
"Yes," Gehrig said, forcing a smile, "off to a very bad start, if you want to be truthful."
Murphy asked if Gehrig thought he would start hitting soon. "I only hope," he said. "You never lose hope in baseball."
Later that morning, he sat in the hotel restaurant and ate breakfast with Bill Dickey. After breakfast, Gehrig was sitting in the lobby reading a newspaper when (Yankees manager) Joe McCarthy arrived.
"Joe, I want to talk to you about an important matter," Gehrig said.
The men, escorted by a bellhop, went to McCarthy's room. When the bellhop was gone, Gehrig blurted his news. He said he was ready to take a seat on the bench.
McCarthy asked if he was sure. Gehrig said he was. He said he was doing it for the good of the team. McCarthy walked back to the hotel lobby and asked the reporters to gather around. He had an announcement.
"It's a black day for me," he said, his voice choking. "And the Yankees."
Gehrig spent much of the early afternoon chatting with sportswriters, both at the hotel and at the ballpark. He seemed glum, the writers said, but he was being a good sport.
"I haven't been a bit of good to the team since the season started," he told one reporter. "It would not be fair to the boys, to Joe or to the baseball public for me to try going on. ...McCarthy has been swell about it all the time. He'd let me go on until the cows came home, he is that considerate of my feelings, but I knew in Sunday's game (against the Washington Senators) that I should get out of there."
By one o'clock, the Yankees and Tigers were at the stadium getting dressed for their game. The Yankee locker room seemed quiet - much quieter than usual. Word of Gehrig's decision had begun to spread, but Dahlgren hadn't heard yet. As he finished dressing and sat on his stool, checking the lacing on his glove, Dahlgren felt a tap on the shoulder, it was coach Art Fletcher, who leaned in close and whispered, "Babe, you're playing first base today." Since 1925, no Yankee but Lou Gehrig had heard those words.
"Are you kidding?" Dahlgren asked.
But Fletcher was already walking away.
"Good luck, Babe," he said over his shoulder.
Slowly Dahlgren's teammates began to approach to offer their encouragement. When Dahlgren walked down the ramp to the dugout and out on the field, he saw Gehrig surrounded by reporters and photographers. Fred Rice, working as an usher that day at the stadium, recalls watching Gehrig put on a mitt before the game and play catch with Dickey. But when one of Gehrig's throws bounced short and rolled to Dickey, the game of catch ended abruptly. "Lou just looked at him," Rice recalled. "He dropped his glove, stumbled around to pick it up, and then walked toward the dugout."
McCarthy asked Gehrig to carry the lineup card to home plate, a job he occasionally performed in his role as captain but which more often fell to one of the coaches.
As Gehrig handed off the line up card and shuffled back toward the dugout, Tiger announcer Ty Tyson used the public address system to inform members of the crowd that they were witness to an important moment: "How about a hand for Lou Gehrig, who played 2,130 games in a row before he benched himself today?" It took a few seconds for the news to register, but as it did, the fans begin to cheer and clap. Gehrig tipped his hat and disappeared into the dugout. He bent over the water fountain and took a long drink, trying to hide his face, but his teammates could all see that he was weeping.
At some point during the game, reporters wandered into the grandstand to interview Wally Pipp, a resident of Grand Rapids, who happened to be in Detroit on business that day and had decided to take in the game. "Lou looks ill to me," said Pipp.
The next day, Gehrig picked up a piece of Book-Cadillac hotel stationery and wrote a note to Eleanor (his wife). The undated letter, written in a graceful hand, was found by archivists at the Baseball Hall of Fame among papers donated by Gehrig's wife. The end of the letter has apparently been lost, or else Eleanor chose not to preserve it. Historians have debated whether Gehrig wrote the letter after ending his streak, or later, after his illness was diagnosed. But given that the letter came from the Book-Cadillac and that Gehrig made reference to an event "yesterday," it seems almost certain that he was referring to the end of his streak:
[I][COLOR=Indigo]"My sweetheart - and please God grant that we may ever be such - for what the hell else matters - That thing yesterday I believe and hope was the turning point of my life for the future as far as taking life too seriously is concerned - It was inevitable, although I dreaded the day, and my thoughts were with you constantly - How would this affect you and I - that was the big question and the most important thing underlying everything. I broke just before the game because of thoughts of you - not because I didn't know you are the bravest kind of partner, but because my inferiority grabbed me and made me wonder and ponder if I could possibly prove myself worthy of you - As for me, the road may come to a dead end here, but why should it? - Seems like our backs are to the wall now, but there usually comes a way out - where, and what, I know not, but who can tell that it might not lead right out to greater things - Time will tell -
"As for our suggestion of a farewell tour and farewell day Joe had a different but sensible idea - He said there wasn't anybody more deserving of the remaining salary - and he wasn't afraid of Ed (Barrow), but with this new setup that question might arise, and if we planned a farewell day to record, newspapermen would interpret it as the absolute finish and that might cause quite a squabble among all the new directors, whereas if we said just a temporary rest and lay off - to come back in warmer weather, there could hardly be any doubt - I couldn't tell you this over the phone because Bill (Dickey) was…" [/COLOR] [/I]
And there the letter broke off.
[B]THE BITTER WITH THE SWEET [/B]
Gehrig carried on with all the rituals and routines of his former life. He sat in front of his locker, smoked his pipe, and pulled on his pinstriped pants. He checked the laces on his glove and curled the brim of his cap. He did everything he'd always done. Except play.
He was an athlete without a sport, a competitor with no opponent. With each day, he grew weaker and clumsier.
As the Yanks continued their road trip, players around the league witnessed his diminishing condition. One day in Cleveland, Bob Feller walked into the Yankee clubhouse and spotted Gehrig "stripped to the waist and shockingly thin … sitting there with his head between his shoulders."
For the two weeks that the team remained in New York, Gehrig's name was scarcely mentioned in the press. Gehrig's sudden plunge from greatness was like nothing the writers had seen before. Legends were supposed to fade, not nosedive. It would seem that no one knew what to say or write. On May 29, the Yankees hit the road again, traveling to Boston, where Red Sox pitcher Elden Auker spotted Gehrig smoking a cigarette in the Fenway Park dugout before the game. Auker, like a lot of Gehrig's friends, had always enjoyed testing the big first baseman's strength. Though Auker was the taller man, Gehrig was much more solidly built. Their wrestling matches usually ended in a matter of seconds, with Auker brushed aside like dandruff. This time, though, when Auker threw his arm around Gehrig's head and neck, Gehrig's knees buckled and he began to fall.
"Oh, God, Elden," he said, "don't do that."
"What's the matter, Lou?" Auker asked.
"I don't know. There's something wrong with me," he answered as his friend helped him to his feet. "It started over the winter. I lost weight and I felt like I was getting weak. This spring it just seems like I'm weaker and weaker and weaker…. I don't know what it is."
Gehrig, at first seemed reluctant, at least publicly, to accept the possibility that he might be ill.
He would suggest later that he had seen a doctor again in May, when the Yankees were playing at home. But he never named the doctor or said if he'd seen a specialist. At this point, given the symptoms, even a general internist might have begun to suspect that Gehrig's problems were rooted in the neurological system. But it still wasn't likely that a doctor would have considered amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Even if the doctor had heard of ALS - no sure thing - he might have assumed that Gehrig was too young to get it.
By the end of May, he had stopped taking batting practice and had quit working out at first base. He sounded as if he'd given up hope of returning to the lineup.
In an interview with Frank Graham of The Sun, he sounded like a man who was worried about more than the end of his playing career. "My friends slap me on the back and say, 'Don't worry, Lou.' Don't worry? How can I help it?" Dr. Harold C. Habein was the first Mayo Clinic doctor to examine Gehrig. When he asked Gehrig if he'd been having any problems, Gehrig said he'd been feeling "a bit clumsy" with his left hand. Otherwise he felt fine. The doctor asked him to undress. "When he took off his clothes for the examination, the diagnosis was not difficult," Habein later wrote in his unpublished memoirs. "There was some wasting of the muscles of his left hand as well as the right. But the most serious observation was the telltale twitchings or fibrillary tremors of numerous muscle groups. I was shocked because I knew what these signs meant - amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. My mother had died of the disease a few years before."
Habein didn't tell Gehrig that he suspected ALS. He wasn't a neurologist. Even if he had been, he wouldn't have wanted to rush such a serious diagnosis. He phoned Dr. Henry W. Woltman, the head of the Mayo's department of neurology.
[I]EPILOGUE: Shortly afterward, Lou Gehrig was diagnosed with ALS at the Mayo Clinic. He would never play baseball again, but he did continue to attend Yankees' games until his health no longer permitted. He died on June 2, 1941, at his home in Riverdale, his wife at his side. [/I]
2005-04-18 19:52 | User Profile
Great post, il ragno.
Lou Gehrig was a helluva man, on and off the field. Sports figures can be a positive influence on society, but they are rare. Almost non-existent in today's sports scene of the decadent, posturing athlete.
RIP, Ludwig Heinrich Gehrig
2005-04-21 19:26 | User Profile
My Dad died of Lou Gherig's disease. When the time came, the doc helped him go, so he didn't have to dwindle down to nothing.
2005-04-21 20:57 | User Profile
[QUOTE=TexasAnarch]My Dad died of Lou Gherig's disease. When the time came, the doc helped him go, so he didn't have to dwindle down to nothing.[/QUOTE] I am so sorry. MLS is a cruel disease. I read an account from a doctor who told his MLS patient he could put him on a respirator. The patient agreed. After several weeks, the patient wrote his doctor a note telling him that it was a mistake and to take him off the machine.