Lou Gehrig

Baseball Player

Name at birth: Henry Louis Gehrig

Lou Gehrig played in 2130 consecutive games for the New York Yankees from 1925 to 1939, gaining the nickname "The Iron Horse." A slugging first baseman, Gehrig played with teammates like Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio during the Yankee glory years of the 1920s and 1930s. Gehrig won a rare triple crown in 1934, leading the league with 49 homers, 165 RBI and a .363 batting average. He also was chosen the league's most valuable player in 1927 and 1936, but is best-remembered for his 15-season streak of consecutive games, a record which stood until it was broken by Cal Ripken in 1995. Gehrig retired after 8 games of the 1939 season and was diagnosed with the degenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS -- now known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. The Yankees held a recognition day for Gehrig on 4 July 1939, at which he spoke his famous line, "Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth." He died two years later in New York.

Extra credit: Wally Pipp, the player Gehrig replaced at the start of his streak, has become a famous bit of baseball trivia... The Yankees retired Gehrig's uniform number 4 in 1939 -- the first player in any sport ever to receive that honor... Gehrig was played by actor Gary Cooper in the 1942 film Pride of the Yankees... Gehrig was also nicknamed "Larrupin' Lou"... Famous people with ALS include actor David Niven and physicist Stephen Hawking.

Blog posts mentioning Lou Gehrig:
Cory Lidle and Thurman Munson