Lou Gehrig.
I recently did an all Joe DiMaggio photo post and received such a nice response for doing so that I decided to do another. This time I’m sharing some photos of another Yankee legend, enjoy.
I assume this was taken in the late 1920’s or early 1930’s as he looks quite a bit younger than most photos you see of him in the mid to late 1930’s.
He definitely did not look like a man who was only 36 when said goodbye to the game in 1939. I can only assume that the abuse on his body from playing every day for so long, in addition to the possible beginning effects of the disease that would take his life aged him towards the end of his career.
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Gehrig being assisted off the field after being hit in the head while at bat. The fact that MLB teams did not start to implement batting helmets until the early 1940’s and officially made them mandatory in the mid 1950’s still kind of blows my mind. Ray Chapman was killed in 1920, so that’s literally decades of playing Baseball in the big leagues without another death. All I can say to that is players back then were incredibly lucky another tragedy on that level never happened again.
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May 31st, 1938. Gehrig plays in his 2000th consecutive career game. The Yankees beat the Red Sox 12-5 that day.
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Gehrig manning First Base during the 1926 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Yankees lost to the Red Birds 4 games to 3. To watch some nice footage of this series, click HERE. I have mentioned it before, but I love photos of Lou playing First Base so much.
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May 3rd, 1938. Gehrig steals home against St. Louis Browns in a game in which the Yankees won, 5-1. The Iron Horse went 2 for 3 that day with a homerun and a double. It was his last complete season playing Baseball.
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Gehrig argues with an umpire during the 1938 World Series against the Chicago Cubs. This photo takes me off guard as Gehrig was known as being very respectful to most and having a even-keeled personality. I would love to know the story behind this incident. To view some video of Game 1 of the series, click HERE (I warn you to put the sound on mute first).
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June 2nd, 1941, Gehrig passes away.
ninety feet of perfection. 
Reblogged this on Johnny's Baseball Blog and commented:
of course i had to reblog this great post about the Iron Horse.
About the ’38 WS photo…there is a really cool wire photo on sale on eBay that depicts the same incident from a slightly different angle and the write up on the back ocovers the details of what happened pretty clearly.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lou-Gehrig-argues-38-World-Series-original-wire-photo-/190494703688
Awesome, thanks for the heads up on this. It is much appreciated!