Leadership Lessons from Yankee Great Lou Gehrig

Robert L. Dilenschneider

Lou Gehrig is among the 31 people profiled by PR veteran Robert Dilenschneider in his new book, “Character: Life Lessons in Courage, Integrity, and Leadership.”

Here's the chapter on Gehrig:

“Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
—Lou Gehrig

Today, the name Lou Gehrig conjures images of a Hall of Fame baseball player known for his fielding, hitting and ability to play every day for seventeen years. But it also brings to mind the man—crippled by ALS, the disease that would also come to bear his name—who said goodbye at Yankee Stadium in 1939.

Both Gehrig’s baseball career and his brave fight against ALS were products of a courageous, resilient and determined character, evident early in his life. Gehrig was born in New York City in 1903, the son of German immigrants, his father a sheet metal worker, his mother a maid. Childhood was difficult. His three siblings all died young, and his father was often drunk, so Lou became the family’s support. He spoke German until he also learned English at age six. He showed his baseball talent early, leading his High School of Commerce team to a victory over Lane Tech High School by hitting a grand slam home run out of what’s now Wrigley Field in Chicago.

He went to Columbia University on a football scholarship but switched to baseball as a pitcher and left after two years to join the Yankees’ minor league affiliate in Hartford. He played sporadically for the big-league team in 1923 and 1924, until the fateful day in 1925 when Yankees first baseman–slugger Wally Pipp had a headache. Gehrig replaced him and never gave the job back.

In Gehrig’s era, baseball players—and athletes in general—earned much less than they do today. It’s estimated Gehrig earned about $360,000 in his entire career, worth about $7 million today. Not bad, but nothing compared with the nine-figure contracts of today’s superstars. Babe Ruth’s salary reached $80,000 a year in 1930 (about $1.5 million in today’s dollars), higher than that of then-President Herbert Hoover. When asked to justify this, the Babe answered: “I had a better year.”

Gehrig had perhaps his best season in 1927, on arguably the best team in MLB history. He hit .373 with 47 home runs and 175 RBIs as the Yankees won 110 regular-season games and swept the Pittsburgh Pirates in four games to win the World Series. Though Gehrig won the league MVP, most baseball aficionados remember 1927 as the year Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs.

After a decade of stardom and unprecedented success for the Yankees, Gehrig, not yet diagnosed with ALS, found himself weakening and unable to run or hit reliably. He broke his consecutive game streak on May 2, 1939, and never played again. He was diagnosed with ALS at the Mayo Clinic in June.

Lou Gehrig was nicknamed the Iron Horse—and for good reason. The day he replaced first baseman Pipp—June 2— is now celebrated in every MLB park as Lou Gehrig Day, to raise money for ALS research. (There’s a great trivia answer for you.) Gehrig went on to play 2,130 consecutive games, a record broken by Cal Ripken Jr. (2,632 games) in 1995 (another trivia answer). Nobody has come close to Ripken—or Gehrig, for that matter—and it’s unlikely anyone ever will. Over his career, Gehrig had a batting average of .310, 2,721 hits, 493 home runs and 1,995 runs batted in. He was an All-Star seven times in a row (1933–39), was the American League Most Valuable Player in 1927 and 1936, won the Triple Crown (highest batting average, most home runs, most runs batted in) in 1934 and won six World Series championships with the Yankees. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939, a few months after his retirement, an exception to the rule that players had to wait five years after retirement before being on the ballot. Gehrig had a plaque on a pedestal near the fence in the center field of old Yankee Stadium (alongside manager Miller Huggins and Babe Ruth) that was finally moved to the stadium’s Monument Park in 1973. For Hollywood’s take on his courage, check out “Pride of the Yankees,” a 1942 Sam Goldwyn movie with Gary Cooper as Gehrig and Babe Ruth and Bill Dickey, among others, as themselves.

His farewell speech, delivered to more than sixty thousand fans packed into Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939, Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day, just a few weeks after his illness forced him to retire, is remarkable and worth looking up.

He said that, despite the bad break he’d gotten with his health, he was the “luckiest man on the face of the earth.” What an amazing statement. Lucky despite a horrible affliction. There’s no self-pity, only gratitude for the fans’ affection.

He praised the officials and teammates who were present, including Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert, umpire Ed Barrow, Miller Huggins and Manager Joe McCarthy. It takes a special person of character to shout out to teammates when the day is all about you. This is genuine, not faked, humility.

He found kind words for the old rival, the Giants, who gave him a fruit bowl and two candlesticks. Sportswriter John Kieran, at the behest of the Yankees team, wrote a poem that was inscribed on a trophy along with all the team members’ names and cherished by Gehrig in his final years.

During the ceremony, held between games of a double-header between the Yankees and the Washington Senators, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia called Gehrig “the perfect prototype of the best sportsmanship and citizenship.”

Legendary Manager Joe McCarthy added that it was a sad day for everyone when Gehrig announced he was leaving baseball. He did so because he felt he was a “hindrance to the team,” McCarthy said. “My God, man, you were never that.”

Gehrig, barely able to stand, finished his speech: “So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.”

Imagine the physical and moral courage it took to stand before all those people and deliver that speech.

He’d live for another two years, racked by the progressive nerve degeneration of ALS. He died at home in the Bronx on June 2, 1941, by coincidence, sixteen years to the day he had replaced Wally Pipp on first base.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as motor neuron disease or Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a rare degenerative disease that causes sufferers to progressively lose control of their limbs and other bodily functions. There’s no known cure. ALS can work quickly—Gehrig died two years after being diagnosed—or slowly—Stephen Hawking survived fifty-five years with the disease, which gradually got worse. Research toward finding better treatments and a cure continues, supported by the Ice Bucket Challenge and other initiatives.

Lou Gehrig taught lessons with his baseball bat on the field and his courage in the face of his devastating illness.