Lou Gehrig Day: Remembering the Iron Horse
Today is the 80th anniversary of the death of Yankee Hall of Famer and arguably one of the best players of all time, Lou Gehrig. Today is also the first annual Lou Gehrig Day in Major League Baseball. Any team playing home games will display "4-ALS" in their stadium today and coaches and players will wear a "Lou Gehrig Day" patch and 4-ALS red wristband to raise awareness for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the neurological disease of Lou Gehrig. died. Since and is still an issue in the world today.
Any team that has a holiday today will celebrate Lou Gehrig's Day tomorrow.
On field effect
Before his world famous speech, Lou Gehrig was one of the best players to have ever played the game. Gehrig was a 7-time All-Star, 2x MVP, Triple Crown winner, 6-time World Series Champion and has been at Monument Park for 79 years. He holds the record for the most consecutive games played with 2,130, a record set over a period of 14 years, without missing a single game of his. His stern attitude of never missing a game earned him the nickname "Iron Horse". This record would last for 79 years until Cal Ripken Jr. broke it 56 years later.
In terms of how impressive Gehrig was, he only had four seasons with one OPS less than 1.000 and two seasons under .900. He ended his career with 1.079 OPS. Only 8 players with over 1,000 plate attendance have over 1000 OPS. Lou Gehrig is one of them, second only to Ted Williams and Babe Ruth and in front of Barry Bonds.
In his worst season, Gehrig was still a 133 wRC+ hitter. At his best, he was at 198 wRC+. He was always known to drive in runs. Lu is second with 185 for most RBIs in a single season, as well as 18th all-time with 114.1 in the war.
Keep in mind, those stats were for the regular season only. When season after season arrived, Gehrig would reach new heights. In the post-season 34 games, Gehrig scored a good .361/.477/.731 for 1.208 career playoff OPS and 194 wRC+ careers. In the 1928 World Series, Gehrig scored .545 runs with 4 home runs and 9 RBIs. Furthermore, he did not strike at all in the playoffs that season.
Post career
Before Gehrig's diagnosis, he wasn't playing nearly as well as he did last season and pulled himself from the Yankees lineup because he felt he was hurting the team's chance of winning. Shortly after, he was diagnosed with ALS and his career came to an end.
Lou Gehrig may have played in a very different era than the game he is today, but his impact on the game, former players and current players cannot be underestimated. He put out numbers like video games throughout his career. When his career was unfortunately cut short, he gave a world famous speech at Yankee Stadium and in those moments he considered himself "the luckiest man on the face of the earth" even though he knew he was dying. He showed that he did not take a moment during his speech. He thanked not only his wife and family but also his managers, teammates and even the ground crew and other lower level employees of the Yankees.
Lou Gehrig ended his famous speech with this quote: "I may have been given a bad break, but I have so much more to live for."
This quote has become an inspiration for people with ALS not to give up and keep fighting.
Today is Lou Gehrig Day, the same day he passed away in 1941.
— sportsthread (@sportsthread) June 2, 2021
Every team will wear a special "4-ALS" patch to raise awareness 🙏🙏 pic.twitter.com/nEzCxqPVct