the AOX

This photo of Lou Gehrig from 1923 surfaced on Columbia’s website:

The diamond is on, what is called today, Hamilton Lawn. This is how it looks today:

On the back of the photo, it reads: “Lou Gehrig while a student at Columbia at bat in a varsity game. Gehrig was a Columbia pitcher who joined the N.Y. Yankees a few weeks after Yankee scouts saw him in a game in 1923.”

Lou Gehrig, probably the classiest athlete of all time, attended Columbia University for two years before a scout from the Yankees signed him to the team. He did not graduate. Despite his fame as a Yankee, he is still known on campus as “Columbia Lou”. His legendary status includes hitting home runs to Low Library, the Pulitzer School of Journalism building, and even Broadway.

He is one of the few players to hit four home runs in one game, and the only person to even arguably get close five: “Gehrig hit a deep fly in his final at-bat that narrowly missed being a fifth home run. The center fielder made a running catch with his back to the plate. The center field corner at Shibe Park was about 470 feet from the plate at that time, so if the ball had been over the center fielder’s head, writers speculated that it could have gone for an inside-the-park home run and Gehrig’s fifth four-bagger of the day.”

This is a revealing article written by Ray Robinson about Gehrig’s time at Columbia.

Despite the records he would set with the Yankees and MLB, he is known most of all for the disease (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) that robbed him of his life. He was forced to retire, and on July 4th, 1939, he spoke to the world:

This is his full speech:

“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I’m lucky.

When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift — that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies — that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter — that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body — it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed — that’s the finest I know.

So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.”

— Lou Gehrig at Yankee Stadium, July 4, 1939