Lou Gehrig wasn’t the first major league baseball player to hit four home runs in a nine-inning game. But he was the first to do it in the 20th century. Bobby Lowe of the Boston Braves did it in 1894 and Ed DeLahanty of the Philadelphia Phillies did it in 1896.
Ten players have joined the group since Gehrig, including the Texas Rangers’ Josh Hamilton in the Rangers’ 10-3 win over the Orioles at Baltimore Tuesday. But it is a bit early to be comparing Hamilton to Gehrig, the “Iron Horse” of the New York Yankees in the 1920s and 1930s.
Hamilton had four homers and a double in the game at Baltimore. In Gehrig’s last at-bat on June 3, 1932, Al Simmons made a spectacular one-handed catch in the deepest part of center field to rob Gehrig of another extra-base hit in the Yankees’ 21-3 victory over the Philadelphia Athletics.
George Earnshaw, the Philadelphia starter, gave up the first three homers in the 1932 game. Leroy Mahaffey gave up No. 4 in the seventh inning.
Gehrig is best remembered for setting a major league record by playing in 2,130 consecutive games. He played at various times despite a broken thumb, a broken toe and painful back spasms. But he did a lot more than play in all of those games. He drove in more than 100 runs 13 years in a row, and scored more than 100 runs 13 years in a row. He had 102 stolen bases during his career, stealing home 15 times. He had more than 200 hits in eight seasons. That’s why he’s in the Cooperstown Hall of Fame.
Before his streak of 2,130 consecutive games was snapped by the disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which has since been called “Lou Gehrig’s disease”) that claimed his life a few years later, Gehrig averaged 138.8 runs per season in his career.
No, I never saw Gehrig play. But I saw a movie, “Pride of the Yankees,” in which Gary Cooper played the role of Gehrig and Babe Ruth played the role of Babe Ruth. (I learned many years later that they reversed the film for scenes of Gehrig at the plate because Cooper was a righthander and Gehrig was a lefthander. They also had to reverse the letters and numbers on the Yankee uniform Cooper wore for those scenes.)
Gehrig, the son of German immigrants, grew up in New York City. He attended Columbia University, and was called “the best college player since George Sisler” when he signed a pro contract with the Yankees. In a 13-year major league career that was shortened by ALS, he scored 1,888 runs, drove in 1,995 runs and had a .340 lifetime batting average.
Ruth was the first player with more than 100 extra base hits in a major league season in 1921. Gehrig was the second in 1927. Eighty years later, they still ranked 1-2 in that category.
Along with all the individual records set by Gehrig that neither Hamilton nor anybody else has matched, there is the matter of the six World Series championships won by the Yankees during his career. The Rangers came within one strike a couple of times last year, but are still looking for their first world championship.
Gehrig had as much to do with those six World Series titles as anybody in the Yankees’ lineup, including Ruth (who died in 1947, four years after Gehrig died).
A total of 16 major league players have hit four home runs in a game, two of them before 1900. The last one to do it before Hamilton was Carlos Delgado of Toronto, against Tampa Bay in 2003.
But for me, the best argument against comparing Hamilton or any other current player to Gehrig may be the fact that if Hollywood ever gets around to making a movie about Josh Hamilton, the leading role can’t be played by the same actor who played the role of Gehrig in “Pride of the Yankees” and won Academy Awards as Alvin York in “Sergeant York” (1941) and Marshall Will Kane in “High Noon” (1952).
Gary Cooper is no longer available.
But if they want somebody to play a cranky old sports writer, as Walter Brennan did in “Pride of the Yankees,” contact my agent. It would be my first Oscar.
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