Posted on 05/02/2018 1:30:13 PM PDT by fugazi
1939: New York Yankee ironman Lou Gehrig tells manager Joe McCarthy that he is taking himself out of the starting lineup.
Gehrig will never play again.
His record of 2,130 straight games played will stand until Baltimore Oriole Cal Ripken tops the streak in 1995.
1949: Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe gets his first career start, shutting out the Cincinnati Reds 3-0. He goes on to lead the Dodgers’ pitching rotation with 17 wins on their way to a National League pennant. Newcombe will lose two seasons to the Army during the Korean War.
1954: The St. Louis Cardinals’ Stan “The Man” Musial, who served in the Navy during World War II, hits five home runs in a double header against the New York Giants.
Musial’s victims that day are pitchers Johnny Antonelli (who served in Korea), Jim Hearn (an Army artilleryman during World War II), Ray Jablonski (an Army military policeman in France during World War II), and Hall of Fame knuckleballer Hoyt “Old Sarge” Wilhelm (fought and was wounded in...
(Excerpt) Read more at victoryinstitute.net ...
The record holder before Gehrig was Everett Scott.
There are a few. Cy Young’s 511 wins (and 383 losses.) DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. A few others.
Perhaps the most unbreakable record, as Pete Rose has pointed out, is Johnny VanderMeer’s two consecutive no-hitters, because as Pete said, “to break it, you’d have to throw three.”
Ironically, the pitcher who came closest to matching it was Ewell (The Whip) Blackwell, also of the Reds, who had the second one broken in the ninth inning (”and it took a guy like Stinky Stanky to do it.” — Waite Hoyt.) Against the same two clubs, in the same order.
Starting a game and coming out of the lineup after an out is nothing but padding your stats. Ripken did it and so did Steve Garvey.
I thinhk Lou pinch hit in game one (for Pee Wee Wanninger.) After that, he played.
Wally Pipp was a pretty good 1B, but all he’s famous for is being the guy Gehrig replaced.
Who was the player who replaced Gehrig?
Never mind any of all that ... Gehrig had to play lots of double-headers in sweltering daytime heat, beginning at 11am in the morning ... didn't have the luxury of airline travel between cities when on the road, no air conditioning to cool off ... had to deal with the (then still legal) Spitball pitch as well as brushback pitches and headhunting, and he *still* hit an astonishing .340 lifetime batting average!
Kudos to Cal Ripkin for breaking the Iron Man record, but in terms of what Lou Gehrig accomplished in his shortened career there is absolutely no comparison.
Iron Man indeed !!!
~ MM ~
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