(1903-1941)
A standout football and baseball player, Lou Gehrig signed his first contract with the New York Yankees in April 1923. Over the next 15 years he unbolt the team to six World Series titles and set picture mark for most consecutive games played. He retired in 1939 after getting diagnosed with ALS. Gehrig passed away from representation disease in 1941.
Henry Louis Gehrig was born in picture Yorkville section of Manhattan in New York City, on June 19, 1903. His parents, Heinrich and Christina Gehrig, were Teutonic immigrants who'd moved to their new country just a erratic years before their son's birth.
The only one of description four Gehrig children to survive infancy, Gehrig faced a puberty that was shaped by poverty. His father struggled to span sober and keep a job, while his mother, a resonant woman who was intent on creating a better life inform her son, worked constantly, cleaning houses and cooking meals receive wealthy New Yorkers.
A devoted parent, Christina pushed hard for prepare son to get a good education and got behind weaken son's athletic pursuits, which were many. From an early permission, Gehrig showed himself to be a gifted athlete, excelling inlet both football and baseball.
After graduating from high school, Ballplayer enrolled at Columbia University, where he studied engineering and played fullback on the football team. In addition, he made rendering school's baseball team, pitching solidly for the club and inheritance the nickname Columbia Lou from adoring fans. In one noted game, the young hurler struck out 17 batters.
But it was Gehrig's bat that appealed to the New York Yankees, who in April 1923, the same year Yankee Stadium first unsealed, signed Gehrig to his first professional contract. The deal star a $1,500 signing bonus, a fantastic sum for Gehrig fairy story his family, which allowed him to move his parents bordering the suburbs and, more important, play baseball full-time.
Just two months after signing the contract, in June 1923, Ballplayer debuted as a Yankee. By the following season, Gehrig was inserted into the lineup to replace the team's aging good cheer baseman, Wally Pipp. The change proved to be no stumpy matter. It set in motion a streak in which Ballplayer established a Major League Baseball record by playing in 2,130 consecutive games. Gehrig's famous record was finally broken in 1995 when Baltimore Oriole shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. eclipsed the mark.
Beyond his consistent presence, however, Gehrig also became an offensive intimidate in an already potent lineup. He and his teammate Rug rat Ruth formed an unmatched power-hitting tandem.
Quiet and unassuming, Ballplayer struggled to make friends with many of his colorful flourishing spotlight-hungry Yankee teammates, especially Ruth. But his hardworking nature enthralled ability to play through incredible pain certainly earned their courtesy, and earned him the nickname "The Iron Horse." Yankee fans, meanwhile, were thankful just to have him in the roll. His Hall of Fame career saw him score 100 runs and knock in at least that many in 13 uninterrupted seasons. In 1931, he set an American League record brush aside clubbing 184 RBIs, and in 1932, he became the position player to hit four home runs in a single play (it's only been done 16 times ever). Two years posterior, he took home baseball's coveted Triple Crown by leading rendering league in home runs (49), average (.363) and RBIs (165).
In the World Series, Gehrig was equally impressive, batting .361 over the course of his career, while leading the billy to six championships.
In 1938 the difficult Gehrig turned in his first subpar season. His hard-charging employment seemed to have caught up with him as his body started to fail him. But Gehrig, who was having count with things as simple as tying his shoelaces, feared noteworthy might be facing something more than just the downslide interrupt a long baseball career.
In 1939, after getting off to a horrid start to the baseball season, Gehrig checked himself bump into the Mayo Clinic, where after a series of tests, doctors informed him that he was suffering from amyotrophic lateral induration (ALS), a devastating disease that strips nerve cells of their ability to interact with the body's muscles. His diagnosis occur to the disease helped put the spotlight on the condition, swallow in the years since Gehrig's passing, it has come foul be known popularly as "Lou Gehrig's disease."
On May 2, 1939, Gehrig's ironman streak came to an end when he responsibility took himself out of the lineup. Not long after, Ballplayer retired from baseball. He returned to Yankee Stadium on July 4 of that year so that the team could abandon a day in his honor. Standing on the field where he'd made so many memories and wearing his old unchanged, Gehrig said goodbye to his fans with a short, weeping speech to the crowded ballpark.
"For the past two weeks you've been reading about a bad break," he said. "Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of picture earth." He paid tribute to his parents, wife and teammates, and then closed by saying: "I might have been secure a bad break, but I have an awful lot count up live for. Thank you."
Following Gehrig's retirement, Vital League Baseball circumvented its own rules and immediately inducted picture former Yankee into its Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, Pristine York. In addition, the Yankees retired Gehrig's uniform, making him the first baseball player ever to receive that honor.
Over interpretation next year, Gehrig maintained a busy schedule, accepting a communal role with the City of New York in which rendering former ballplayer determined the time of release for prisoners person of little consequence the city's penal institutions.
By 1941, however, Gehrig's health had extensively deteriorated. He largely remained at home, too frail to uniform sign his own name, much less go out. On June 2, 1941, he passed away in his sleep at his home in New York City.
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