Lou Gehrig - The Iron Horse
Lou Gehrig's legendary accomplishments on the baseball diamond
include a .340 lifetime batting average, the 15th highest
in baseball history. He collected more than 400 total bases
in five different seasons; a major league record. Only
16 players have achieved that level of power in a single season,
Babe Ruth did it twice and Chuck Klein three times. Gehrig
is one of only ten players with more with than 100 extra base
hits in a single season, and only he and Chuck Klein did it
in two different years.
 Lou
Gehrig hit 23 career grand slam home runs, a major league
record, he hit 73 three-run homers and 166 two-run homers,
giving him the highest average of RBI's per home run of anybody
in history with more than 300 HR's. On June 3, 1932,
Gehrig hit four home runs in a single game becoming the first
American League player to accomplish this feat.
Gehrig won the Triple Crown in 1934 with a .363 batting average,
hit 49 HR's with 165 RBI's. He was voted the Most Valuable
Player in 1927 and in 1936. In the 1920's, a player could
only win the Most Valuable Player Award once in his career.
The award was changed in 1932 to allow a player to win it
as often as he could. Either Gehrig or Babe Ruth would
have won the MVP award every year in the 1920's and early
1930's as they were the greatest run producers baseball has
ever known. Lou Gehrig was a compulsive worker with
a record of 2,130 straight games played, and he proudly played
his whole career with the New York Yankees. He
played every game for more than 13 seasons, despite a broken
thumb, painful back spasms, and a broken toe. X-rays taken
late in his career, showed Gehrig's hands had 17 different
fractures that had healed while he continued to play.
Gehrig is the only player who can stand comparison with his
spectacular teammate, Babe Ruth. Batting back-to-back in the
Yankee lineup, Ruth batting ahead of Gehrig were the most
fearsome combination in history. Lou Gehrig's RBI's totals
catch one's eye first, next his great run scoring makes a
compelling statistic to rank him as the game's greatest total
runs producer in baseball's history.
In his 13 full seasons, Lou
Gehrig averaged 147 RBI's a year, from 1926 thru 1938. No
other player was able to even reach the 147 RBI mark until
George Foster of the Cincinnati Reds did so in 1977.
In 1927, Gehrig had 175 RBI's, in 1930 he had 174 RBI's and
in 1931 his 184 RBI's are the highest total in American League
History. Gehrig drove in over 150 runs in a season seven
times, over 170 three times.
This great run producer scored on average 138.8 runs per
season in his 13 years. In 1927, Gehrig scored 149 runs,
in 1931 he scored 163 runs and in 1936 he scored an incredible
167 runs. Only in his last season did he score less
than 120 runs and in that year he scored 115 times.
baseballhistorian.com - Legends - Lou Gehrig
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Legends (Page 2)
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