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Lou Gehrig last career home run....
Lou Gehrig last career home run....
Item # 566813
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April 14, 1939
THE NEW YORK TIMES, New York, NY, April 14, 1939
* Lou Gehrig very last career home run
* New York Yankees
* MLB Baseball
This 48 page newspaper has a four column headline on page 30: "Dodgers Stop Yanks as Moore Stars" with subheads that include: "Dodgers Overcome 2 Gehrig Homers, Rolfe's Blow and One by Keller With 3 On" and more.
Tells of a exhibition game just prior to the start of the 1939 regular season. This was in fact Lou Gehrig's last time he hit a home run in a baseball game before he was forced out of baseball with illness a short time later. Great to have in this famous NYC title.
Other news of the day throughout.Rag edition in great condition.
wikipedia notes: At the midpoint of the 1938 season, Gehrig's performance began to diminish. At the end of that season, he said, "I tired mid season. I don't know why, but I just couldn't get going again." Although his final 1938 statistics were above average (.295 batting average, 114 RBI, 170 hits, .523 slugging percentage, 689 plate appearances with only 75 strikeouts, and 29 home runs), they were significantly down from his 1937 season, in which he batted .351 and slugged .643. In the 1938 World Series, he had four hits in fourteen at-bats, all singles.
When the Yankees began their 1939 spring training in St. Petersburg, Florida, it was obvious that Gehrig no longer possessed his once-formidable power. Even Gehrig's base running was affected, and at one point he collapsed at Al Lang Field, then the Yankees' spring training park in St. Petersburg. Throughout his career, Gehrig was considered an excellent baserunner, but as the 1939 season got under way, his coordination and speed had deteriorated significantly.
By the end of April, his statistics were the worst of his career, with one RBI and a .143 batting average. Fans and the press openly speculated on Gehrig's abrupt decline. James Kahn, a reporter who wrote often about Gehrig, said in one article:
I think there is something wrong with him. Physically wrong, I mean. I don't know what it is, but I am satisfied that it goes far beyond his ball-playing. I have seen ballplayers 'go' overnight, as Gehrig seems to have done. But they were simply washed up as ballplayers. It's something deeper than that in this case, though. I have watched him very closely and this is what I have seen: I have seen him time a ball perfectly, swing on it as hard as he can, meet it squarely — and drive a soft, looping fly over the infield. In other words, for some reason that I do not know, his old power isn't there... He is meeting the ball, time after time, and it isn't going anywhere.
He was indeed meeting the ball, with only one strikeout in 28 at-bats; however, Joe McCarthy found himself resisting pressure from Yankee management to switch Gehrig to a part-time role. Things came to a head when Gehrig had to struggle to make a routine put-out at first base. The pitcher, Johnny Murphy, had to wait for Gehrig to drag himself over to the bag so he could field the throw. Murphy said, "Nice play, Lou."
On April 30, Gehrig went hitless against the Washington Senators. Gehrig had just played his 2,130th consecutive major league game.
On May 2, the next game after a day off, Gehrig approached McCarthy before the game in Detroit against the Tigers and said, "I'm benching myself, Joe", telling the Yankees' skipper that he was doing so "for the good of the team". McCarthy acquiesced, putting Ellsworth "Babe" Dahlgren in at first base, and also said that whenever Gehrig wanted to play again, the position was his. Gehrig himself took the lineup card out to the shocked umpires before the game, ending the fourteen-year streak. Before the game began, the Briggs Stadium announcer told the fans, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the first time Lou Gehrig's name will not appear on the Yankee lineup in 2,130 consecutive games." The Detroit Tigers' fans gave Gehrig a standing ovation while he sat on the bench with tears in his eyes. A wire service photograph of Gehrig reclining against the dugout steps with a stoic expression appeared the next day in the nation's newspapers. Other than his retirement ceremony, it is the most-reproduced and best-remembered visual image of Gehrig.
Gehrig stayed with the Yankees as team captain for a few more weeks, but never played again.
Category: The 20th Century
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