"Lou Gehrig batted from a wide stance, spread-eagling the plate and taking a short strike. It wasn't as noticeable as it might have been in other players because of his tremendous bulk. Power, of course, was the great characteristic of his hitting, but he had all the attributes of great batsmen, the eyes to follow a curve ball, the judgment to pick out the right ball to hit, the ability to hit through a hole. He didn't have anything but power at first, of course, but all these came later, along with the ability to bunt when he had to do so.
To get the true worth of Gehrig's batting prowess it is preferable to take his runs batted in marks rather than any of his other figures. For instance, in 1931, when he set the A.L. record with 184 RBI's there were at least 47 times when he came to bat with no chance to drive in a run, except by a homer, since Babe Ruth, batting ahead of him, had hit a home run which meant there was nobody on base when Lou came to bat.
When you consider that Gehrig batted home no fewer than 1,991 runs in his time with the Yankees and that for ten of those seasons Ruth was hitting home runs to empty the bases ahead of him, you get some idea of the devastating power Lou packed in his bat. Since 1920, when records were first kept on this form of endeavor, Lou totaled more RBI's than anybody except Ruth himself.
Perhaps the first person to realize the raw power of Gehrig was Harry Kane, a high school coach of note who had Gehrig as his first baseman on the 1920 High School of Commerce team. Commerce won the Greater New York P.S.A.L. title and with it the right to a trip to Chicago to play Lane Technical High, the Chicago champions.
With the score tied at 8-8 and the bases filled with New York high school kids in the ninth, Gehrig hit one clean out of Wrigley Field. Probably the least surprised person in the park was Coach Kane. Harry had seen Lou bust'em before, and for farther distances, too. It was this blow, however, which first focused the national spotlight on Gehrig. Nobody could believe then, though, that a dozen years later Gehrig would be teamed up with Babe Ruth blasting home runs in that same ball park in a World Series.
Gehrig has been labeled a plodder. In many respects he was if plodding means thorough and painstaking application to the job at hand. Terribly green and awkward when he came up to the Yankees in 1923, Lou was an accomplished first baseman before his star had set.
When Gehrig started as a high school ball player, all he had was weight, power and willingness. He could hit a fast ball but he had to learn to hit the curve. And learn he did. Then he had to learn to field. That he learned, too, one phase at a time. One of his most exacting mentors was Wally Pipp, the man whose job he had taken with the Yankees. Pipp, one of baseball's finest characters, knew his career had run its course when he first saw the big kid from Columbia come up, yet Wally worked many hours with Lou teaching him the niceties of first basing.
Methodically, Gehrig set about mastering the art of first base. In high school and college he had pitched and played the outfield as well as first and he hadn't too much actual experience around the bag when the Yanks optioned him to Hartford in the Eastern League. One of the last faults Lou had to overcome to become a flawless first baseman was to curb himself on balls hit to his right. This last fault was indicative of Gehrig's character. He couldn't do enough work, so he repeatedly went so far to his right that he was fielding balls which properly belonged to the second baseman and there was no one to cover first after Lou had fielded the ball. It was a fault born of overeagerness.
Gehrig conquered this in characteristic fashion. Before each pitch, he mentally calculated how many steps he could go to his right for ground balls, taking into consideration the batter, the speed of his own pitcher, etc. He didn't work it out to a precise mathematical formula but it worked. As Pipp said of him, 'He didn't learn quickly but he learned thoroughly. He sweated each detail out and mastered it before he moved on to the next.'
In 1927, when what many consider the greatest of all baseball teams defeated the Pirates four straight in the World Series, Gehrig made some astonishing catches of foul flies in the first two games in Pittsburgh. Gehrig, in practice, had paced off the distance between the bag and the field boxes so he knew precisely how far he could go without running into the stands.
Pipp, Gehrig's predecessor, had a genuine fondness for Lou and even today Wally never tires of telling the story of how Gehrig took his job. He was bothered with a headache one day and asked Doc Woods, the trainer, to get him a couple of aspirin tablets.
Miller Huggins, the Yankee manager, overheard the request and told Wally to take the day off and he would start Gehrig at first base.
'Maybe you need a rest, Wally,' remarked Hug solicitously.
'A rest,' grins Wally when he tells the story now. 'What I got was a vacation! Gehrig went to first base and stayed there for fifteen years. The next time I played first base it was for Cincinnati in the National League, a year later!'
Gehrig's consecutive game record (2,130) actually began June 1, 1925, the day before he replaced Pipp when he had to pinch-hit for Pee Wee Wanninger, the Yankee shortstop of the moment. The Yankees never again played an American League game without Lou's name in the batting order until May 2, 1939, in Detroit when he told Joe McCarthy it would be better for himself and for the team if he were benched. He never played in another ball game and was dead twenty-five months later."
-Tom Meany, Baseball's Greatest Hitters (Baseball Digest, June 1950)
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