A Legend in the
Making
(Continued from previous WS page) The Iron Horse, as Gehrig was called, participated
in 2,130 consecutive games, playing through sickness and a broken finger
and the inevitable sprains and bruises. Although that streak was over, it was widely assumed
Gehrig would eventually work his way back onto the field. This was his
nature. But Gehrig was dying as he tried to compose
himself on that sunny afternoon. The Yankees manager, Joe McCarthy,
persuaded him to say some words, and among those were the most famous
in baseball history. ''Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading
about a bad break I got,'' Gehrig began. ''Yet today I consider myself
the luckiest man on the face of the earth.'' The slow, wrenching, devastating demise of
Gehrig is illuminated in Richard J. Tofel's excellent book about the 1939
Yankees, ''A Legend in the Making.'' The 1927 Yankees are generally
regarded as one of baseball's greatest teams, with a Murderers' Row lineup
that included Babe Ruth and a young Gehrig. And often the Yankees of 1961,
the Oakland Athletics of 1972-74, the Cincinnati Reds of 1975-76 and the
Yankees of 1998 are compared with the '27 team. But the '39 Yankees may
have been better than any of them, finishing the season with a record
of 106-45; Connie Mack, the legendary manager of the Philadelphia Athletics,
concluded at the time that the '39 Yankees were history's greatest team.
As Tofel notes, that group of Yankees essentially
established the franchise as a dynasty, becoming the first team to
win three consecutive championships, before winning a fourth straight
title in 1939. Many longtime Yankees had their best individual
seasons in 1939. Joe DiMaggio batted .381 with 30 homers and just 20 strikeouts,
Red Rolfe scored 139 runs, second baseman Joe Gordon was among four players
with more than 100 runs batted in, and seven pitchers compiled 10 or more
victories. As the '98 Yankees won daily and challenged records, their
press releases included the corresponding won-loss records of other teams
through 50 games, through 60 games, etc., and they seemed to be constantly
chasing the success of the '39 Yankees. Tofel presents the season as it unfolds, day
to day and week to week, rather than viewing it in retrospect, and this
approach works well. DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak won't occur
until 1941, and the name Marilyn Monroe does not yet exist; what we see
of DiMaggio, in 1939, is a staggering young star whose relationship with
the team is becoming increasingly complicated. We see an aging pitcher,
Red Ruffing, receiving treatment on his arm from his wife, in an era when
there is virtually no understanding of rotator cuffs or elbow ligaments.
And what we see in Gehrig, at the outset of spring
training, is confusion. He is 36 years old and coming off a season in
which he slugged 29 home runs, and while he understands that performance
diminishes with age, Gehrig is suddenly struggling to run at all, to move,
to stand. He can't do the simplest things, like catching throws to first
base. Extremely sensitive, easily hurt by perceived slights, always desperate
to please, Gehrig tells reporters he just needs to work harder. But McCarthy is concerned, and begins hinting
at possible change. The manager knows how much Gehrig's consecutive-game
streak means to him. There have been times in the past when Gehrig has
extended the streak by playing only an inning, but when sentimentality
intrudes in baseball, the result is rarely good for the team. According
to baseball lore, Gehrig took himself out of the lineup, but as Tofel
shows, it's more likely that McCarthy indicated firmly to Gehrig that
it was time to end the streak; Gehrig was benched after the first four
games of the regular season. At the time, it seemed that Gehrig was a star
player fading with age. What he became, after his diagnosis and his speech
at Yankee Stadium and his death, is something greater. The illness that
killed him now bears his name; when Cal Ripken broke Gehrig's consecutive-game
record in 1995, the funds to research Lou Gehrig's disease increased dramatically.
Gehrig is almost a baseball super hero now, in conventional wisdom. What we learn of Gehrig in Tofel's book, his
first, is more compelling, more touching. As his body fails him by
season's end, he is unable to carry the lineup card to home plate. Gehrig
first fears for his streak, then for his career, then for the feelings
of his wife. As he stands at the microphone on Lou Gehrig Appreciation
Day, almost certainly knowing his fate, he musters extraordinary perspective
and grace.
Buster Olney, a sportswriter for The Times, covered the Yankees from
1998 to 2001.
Licensed Reprint for www.wordsmitten.com Copyright © 2002 The New York Times Company.
Maybe a couple of his closest friends on the team knew, perhaps his wife,
but most members of the press probably didn't, and certainly not the fans;
there were rows of empty seats for Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day.
Courtesy of The New York Times Company
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