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While baseball endures the Pete Rose headlines, it is commemorating one of its most sainted legends. Lou Gehrig will be remembered July 4 at Yankee Stadium on the 50th anniversary of his goodbye there. Stricken by the mysterious disease now named for him, he described himself that day in 1939 as ''the luckiest man on the face of this earth.'' Within two years, he was dead at age 37.
Through the years, Lou Gehrig has remained ''a symbol of decency and kindliness and courage,'' as Frank Graham, a great sports columnist of that era, once wrote of him. This season Gehrig's memory is being honored at every major league ball park with speeches, videos and a ceremonial ''first pitch'' to first base instead of to home plate. He is also pictured on a new 25-cent stamp issued by the United States Postal Service.
Lou Gehrig is remembered for his record streak of 2,130 consecutive games, for his 493 home runs and .340 average, for having been baseball's best first baseman, and for having been the cleanup hitter behind Babe Ruth on the 1927 Yankees, considered by many historians to have been baseball's most dominant team.
Lou Gehrig is remembered as the Iron Horse because of his strength and stamina before his illness. But he is also remembered for the iron will with which he accepted the disease for which there is still no cure. Without complaint. Without self pity. But he knew. Shortly after returning from the Mayo Clinic where he was diagnosed as having amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, he was walking along a railroad platform in Washington when a group of boys shouted, ''Good luck.'' He waved and smiled, then he turned to Rud Rennie, one of the baseball writers traveling with the Yankees.
''They're wishing me luck,'' he said quietly, ''and I'm dying.''
But the memory lives. In the old Yankee clubhouse, behind third base in those years, Joe DiMaggio's locker was adjacent to Gehrig's near a window. To kill time before a game, they often tried to guess the size of that day's crowd by the number of people on the sidewalk.
Continue reading the main story''And my rookie year,'' DiMaggio once recalled, ''Lou stuck up for me with an umpire.''
Early in that 1936 season DiMaggio let a questionable high pitch go by. When the plate umpire, crusty George Moriarity, called it a strike, DiMaggio didn't complain. But when Moriarity called an even higher pitch a strike, DiMaggio glanced back.
''Moriarity growled, 'Turn around,' '' DiMaggio remembered, ''but from the on-deck circle, I heard Lou yell, 'Leave the kid alone, George. If you call 'em right, he won't have to turn around.' When you're a rookie, you never forget that.''
The next year Tommy Henrich was a Yankee rookie. And like all young players then, he was awed by Gehrig's line-drive power.
''Lou hit four line drives one day,'' Henrich recalled. ''I'd never seen line drives like that before. But when I mentioned it to Bill Dickey, he said, 'You only saw soft line drives. Wait until you see his hard line drives.' '' Henrich remembered a game against Johnny Allen, a Cleveland Indians right-hander who had been with the Yankees.
''Lou and Allen never got along,'' Henrich said. ''Allen was a rough, tough character whose life style didn't appeal to Lou. The day we knocked out Allen, I got a big hit and in the clubhouse I said, 'I'm the happiest guy in the world right now,' but Lou laughed and said, 'You're not the happiest guy in the world, I am.' But as big as he was and as strong as he was, Lou was a live-and-let-live guy. You never heard him say, 'I did this.' ''
But in spring training in 1939 the Yankees suddenly realized that Gehrig wasn't himself.
''He couldn't get out of the way of a pitch, and he couldn't run,'' Henrich recalled. ''In May, he benched himself. His consecutive-game streak was over.''
DiMaggio and Henrich knew Gehrig in his final years but Mark Koenig, now 86 years old, and Gehrig were Yankee rookies in 1925.
''He was a real nice kid,'' Koenig recalled. ''Benny Bengough and I had an apartment together and he'd visit us. That was long before he got married. I don't know how he ever got married; he was so bashful.''
Of all the big league baseball players who have grown up in New York City, Henry Louis Gehrig was the best.
He was born on June 19, 1903, at 1994 Second Avenue, near 102d Street, where the red-brick Washington Projects are now. His German immigrant parents later settled at West 170th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, where he played baseball, football and soccer on the nearby sandlots. And at Columbia, where he was a pitcher as well as a first baseman and outfielder, people still point to the library steps, where one of his most famous homers landed.
''Lou and the Babe,'' said Koenig, ''where would the ball go if they were hitting it now? The ball's like a golf ball now.'' Friends at first, Gehrig and the Babe had a strained relationship after the Babe once criticized Lou's mother. But on July 4, 1939, on Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day at the Stadium, the Babe hugged him tight. After his short speech, Gehrig, his step slowed, walked to the dugout carrying one of the many gifts he had received, a silver trophy. On a bronze plate at the base of it was enscribed a poem, ''To Lou Gehrig,'' written by John Kieran, then The New York Times sports columnist, at the request of the players. It read: We've been to the wars together; We took our foes as they came; And always you were the leader, And ever you played the game. Idol of cheering millions; Records are yours by sheaves; Iron of frame they hailed you, Decked you with laurel leaves. But higher than that we hold you, We who have known you best; Knowing the way you came through Every human test. Let this be a silent token Of lasting friendship's gleam And all that we've left unspoken. - Your pals on the Yankee team.
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