Last Ride of the Iron Horse: How Lou Gehrig Fought ALS to Play One Final Championship Season
Perhaps it’s the morbid curiosity in me, looking for details about the tragic death of Lou Gehrig, which made Dan Joseph’s examination of the 1938 campaign hard to put down.
For a lot of people, it all boils down to hindsight, which, as the saying goes, is 20/20. You can look at every little twinge, every misstep, and say, “Aha! That’s the start of it.” But one could look at Gehrig’s final full season and wonder what all the fuss was about. Granted he failed to hit .300 for the first time since 1925 and had “only” 29 home runs, but he drove in more than 100 — for the 13th straight season — and scored a similar number. Even though he was just 35 in 1938, hadn’t he played in nearly 2,000 consecutive games, pushing through illness and injury? Wouldn’t that take a toll on any mortal?
The author/detective begins to pick at the bones, so to speak, looking for indications that ALS was starting to take its as yet undiagnosed toll. He points to Gehrig’s diminishing power and clumsiness afield as clues, even though the ballplayer didn’t find out there was anything medically wrong until after the middle of 1939, when he visited the Mayo Clinic.
Joseph believes the first hints came while Gehrig was shooting a western in Hollywood after the Yankees ended their 1937 season. In fact, a quick comparison between his account and that of Jonathan Eig in his wonderful 2005 bio, Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig
Whether Gehrig knew the truth or not has always been in question. According to The Pride of the Yankees, he did; not so, wrote his widow, Eleanor, in her memoir. So there is still a good deal of speculation.
One aspect on which most people agree is that a good number of Gehrig’s teammates, as well as the media, felt he was hurting the Yankees on the field, and Joseph’s painstaking research points in that direction, with missed opportunities at the plate and a severe drop-off in power. They were hoping he would take himself out of the lineup, rather than leave the decision to manager Joe McCarthy, whose patience was sorely tested.
The Last Ride is certainly the most detailed look at Gehrig’s season of decline I’ve come across, and certainly ALS must have had a lot to do with that. I’m still not thoroughly convinced, though, that it was the sole reason. Nevertheless, it is a gripping account of a terrible situation.
is available on Amazon.com,
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