Iron Horse

Ray Robinson, not to be confused with Sugar Ray Robinson, was a magazine editor of publications that did not deal with sports, but nevertheless he wrote well-received biographies of sports figures from his youth. He died last year, and to pay tribute I read his biography of Lou Gehrig, titled Iron Horse: Lou Gehrig and His Time.

Robinson writes, in his introduction, "But through all the years of Yankee hegemony I preferred Gehrig, even as he played and lived constantly in the bulging shadow of Ruth." Mostly this is because Gehrig was sort of the white knight of baseball, compared to the raucous behavior of most ballplayers, especially Ruth. His opening chapter is about Ruth's "called home run" in the 1932 World Series, which is still argued about today. No one remembers that Gehrig, up next, hit a home run of his own.

Gehrig was born to German immigrants in 1903, and was something of a mama's boy. He went to Columbia and hit some memorably long home runs, and ended signing with the Yankees (John McGraw of the Giants took a look at him and didn't like what he saw, thus changing baseball history). He earned the first base job after the Yankees' Wally Pipp was hit in the head with a pitch in 1925. Gehrig did not relinquish the position for thirteen more years, or 2,130 games.

He was a prodigious hitter and worked to make himself a good first basemen. What one gets from the book that he was a perfectionist, sometimes breaking down in tears when he made a mistake. He played through many injuries, including a number of broken fingers. The streak was tweaked a little--sometimes he was lifted early, or just pinch hit. One game was cancelled by the Yankees president Ed Barrow because of rain, even though there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

After Ruth retired in 1934, Gehrig enjoyed some time as the greatest of Yankees, although in 1936 Joe DiMaggio came along and once again he was thrust in the shadows, and unfavorable press. "Lou’s difficulty with the press stemmed from his inability to master the art of small talk. Not adept at ornamental language or rhetorical flourishes, Lou had a tendency to speak in flat, un-dramatic sentences, much to the chagrin of reporters who wrote about the Yankees."

Robinson laments: "Ironically, Gehrig is now best remembered not for the committed way he played the game, but for the way he departed it on that lugubrious summer day in 1939 when he waved farewell to the fans at Yankee Stadium because he was stricken in the prime of life with an incurable disease." The last few chapters, when the perfectionist was mystified why his skill were deteriorating, are indeed sad. But his speech, which is now the centerpiece of the movie about him, The Pride of the Yankees, is a rousing finish to a great career.

Robinson, as noted, loved Gehrig, and takes every opportunity to take shots at Babe Ruth. He does mention the rumor that on a boat to Japan for a tour, Ruth and Gehrig's wife, Eleanor, had too much to drink and had sex, which she vociferously denied. "But for mere mortals, such as himself, Gehrig thought the rules had to be strictly obeyed; a man was not entitled to breathe too freely. He adhered to a moral code loftier, certainly, than the Babe’s, risking accusations from some that he was rigid, stuffy, and self-righteous. In his own self-abnegating way, he was a believer in dignified behavior. He was convinced others should share his sense of pride in being a New York Yankee.” Ruth attended Gehrig's farewell day, but Robinson notes that they hadn't spoken in years.

Gehrig was something of a sphinx, but Robinson does reveal certain details about him, such as that Eleanor exposed culture to him, and he particularly enjoyed operas and ballets. I also never knew that after he retired from baseball Mayor LaGuardia appointed him as a parole commissioner. He crossed paths with a young tough who would one day be known as Rocky Graziano, who credited Gehrig with helping set him on the right path.

Robinson's prose style is part baseball boilerplate part lofty academics. You'll be reading along to standard sports talk and then get a literary reference. This kind of pleased me, as sports writers are always pulling literary allusions out of thin air, which makes what they're writing about something greater than it is.