A sturdy but oddly unsatisfying biography of Lou Gehrig, arguably
major-league baseball's most tragic hero. Robinson (who ghosted Oh
Baby, I Love It for Tim McCarver) provides a thorough account of
Gehrig's life and times, plus an afterword on Pride of the Yankees,
"a three handkerchief film" starring Gary Cooper. The sole
surviving son of immigrant parents, Gehrig grew up in Manhattan's
Washington Heights. His athletic abilities earned him a place at
Columbia Univ., and later on the Yankees. Playing in the shadow of
the flamboyant Babe Ruth, Gehrig helped the Bronx Bombers win seven
pennants and six World Series, from the Roaring Twenties through
the eve of WW II. Despite a career batting average of .340 and 493
homers, the quietly industrious first baseman is best remembered
for playing in 2,130 consecutive regular-season games. The streak
ended in the spring of 1939 when amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a
wasting polio-like disease, abruptly robbed Gehrig of his marvelous
physical skills. Still the team's captain, he spent the season on
the bench. Mayor La Guardia gave the future Hall-of-Famer a job on
N.Y.C.'s Parole Commission, but he died in 1941, less than three
weeks short of his 38th birthday. Robinson makes every effort to
bring the off-field Gehrig down to human scale, e.g., recounting
the tensions that kept his domineering mother and beloved, loving
wife at ann's length. But the problem may be that his subject was a
genuinely diffident man who kept his own counsel and let diamond
feats speak for themselves. Notwithstanding the platitudinous
tributes of contemporaries, anecdotal reportage, and a wealth of
statistical material, then, Gehrig remains an enigmatic individual
whose competitive spark, grace under mortal pressures, and allied
attributes can apparently be related, albeit not explained. In the
parlance of the summer game, Robinson is thrown out trying to
stretch a solid two-bagger into a triple. (Kirkus Reviews)
Lou Gehrig will go down in history as one of the best ballplayers
of all time; he was elected to the Hall of Fame and played in a
record-setting 2,130 consecutive games. ALS known today as "Lou
Gehrig's Disease" robbed him of his physical skills at a relatively
young age, and he died in 1941. Ray Robinson re-creates the life of
this legendary ballplayer and also provides an insightful look at
baseball, including all the great players of that era: Babe Ruth,
Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and more. 16 photographs."
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