Lou gehrig mini biography

(1903-1941)

Who Was Lou Gehrig?

A standout football and baseball player, Lou Gehrig signed his first contract with the New York Yankees in April 1923. Over the next 15 years he led the grupp to six World Series titles and set the mark for most consecutive games played. He retired in 1939 after getting diagnosed with ALS. Gehrig passed away from the disease in 1941.

Early Years

Henry Louis Gehrig was born in the Yorkville section of Manhattan in New York City, on June 19, 1903. His parents, Heinrich and Christina Gehrig, were German immigrants who'd moved to their new country just a few years before their son's birth.

The only one of the four Gehrig children to survive infancy, Gehrig faced a childhood that was shaped bygd poverty. His father struggled to stay sober and keep a job, while his mother, a strong woman who was avsikt on creating a better life for her son, worked constantly, cleaning houses and cooking meals for wealthy New Yorkers.

A devoted parent, Ch

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He was the son of German immigrants.

Born Henry Louis Gehrig in New York City on June 19, 1903, the future sports icon was the son of German immigrants. His father and mother each arrived in America as young adults then met and married in New York City. Gehrig, the only one of his parents’ four offspring to survive past infancy, spent his early childhood in a heavily German neighborhood in Manhattan called Yorkville and spoke German with his family. Money was tight in the household: Gehrig’s father found periodic employment as a metal worker, while his mother brought in money as a cook and cleaning lady. Gehrig’s mother was a dominant force in his life, and even after becoming a star Yankee, he lived with his parents until shortly before his marriage at age 30.

Lou Gehrig on the Columbia University baseball team.

His big break allegedly resulted from a team member’s headache.

In 1923, Gehrig, then a sophomore at Columbia University, where he played football and baseball, dro

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LUCKIEST MAN
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF LOU GEHRIG

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Baseball's Tragic Hero

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Lou Gehrig was a baseball legend—the Iron Horse, the stoic New York Yankee who was the greatest first baseman in history, a man whose consecutive-games streak was ended by a horrible disease that now bears his name. But as this definitive new biography makes clear, Gehrig’s life was more complicated — and, perhaps, even more heroic — than anyone really knew.

Drawing on new interviews and more than two hundred pages of previously unpublished letters to and from Gehrig, Luckiest Man gives us an intimate portrait of the man who became an American hero: his life as a shy and awkward youth growing up in New York City, his unlikely friendship with Babe Ruth (a friendship that allegedly ended over rumors that Ruth had had an affair with Gehrig’s wife), and his stellar career with the Yankees, where his consecutive-games streak stood for more than half a centu