In his brief 37 years, Lou Gehrig couldn't catch a break. Incredibly shy, he never cashed in on his movie-star looks. He adored his mother, but she sabotaged the few relationships he had enough courage to persue. When he finally did marry, the two women in his life quarreled endlessly, a rift that would remain even after his death. As a ball player, Gehrig was too insecure to seek the salary he deserved, always fearing that his next paycheck might be his last. When he became a star, his personality and accomplishments were overshadowed by the larger-than-life presence of Babe Ruth, and after the Babe retired, it was a young Joe DiMaggio who caught the public's fancy. Struck by a fast-moving fatal illness, the Yankees held Lou Gehrig Day on July 4, 1939, but not a single media outlet recorded the entirely of his famous farewell speech. And when death came, two years later, even the birth date on his tombstone was wrong.
As a fellow journalist who routinely deals with rigorous fact-checking, I congratulate Jonathan Eig on one of the most meticulously researched -- and thoroughly sourced -- sports biographies I've come across. I am on my third reading, and each time I soak up something new from every chapter. "Luckiest Man" is a smooth-flowing, well-organized masterpiece that unearths precious new details about this admired, enigmatic, and intensely private figure.
Unlike the gushing Gehrig biographies of yesteryear, Eig goes beyond baseball, the statistics, and myth of the the Iron Horse, or Biscuit Pants as his teammates sometimes called him, to reveal an individual of tremendous character, but entirely human. Gehrig was a misfit. In an era when ballplayers were swashbuckling tough guys, "Columbia Lou" was a sensitive college boy. While his teammates were carousing, Gehrig's joy was to indulge in simple pleasures -- going to the movies, fishing on Long Island Sound aboard his little row boat, and returning home after a game to eat dinner with his parents. He was a loner who smoked too much and hated to part with a buck. When the Yankees lost or he failed in the clutch, he sulked, even cried.
Eig's year-by-year chronicle of Gehrig's maturation is fascinating. But what makes this book truly remarkable is the treasure trove of largely unknown correspondence the author has tracked down. It reminds us that Gehrig's real greatness had little to do with home runs and runs batted in. In a series of deeply personal letters he wrote to his wife, Eleanor, and the doctors who treated him in the final two years of his life, we get to peak inside the heart and mind of a man who knew he was going to die, yet one who showed no bitterness or anger -- only hope and concern for those around him.
Through his own words, we learn how ALS sapped Gehrig of his strength day by day, the treatments he sought, his unflinching optimism, the friendships he made, and how he tried to live a normal life as his body withered away.
For all of its sadness, "Luckiest Man" is an uplifting story of a role model for the ages. Jonathan Eig has given us a gift to cherish.
