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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Drawing on new interviews and more than two hundred pages of previously unpublished letters to and from Gehrig, Luckiest Man gives us an intimate portrait of the man who became an American hero: his life as a shy and awkward youth growing up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 century. What was not previously known, however, is that symptoms of Gehrig's affliction began appearing in 1938, earlier than is commonly acknowledged. Later, aware that he was dying, Gehrig exhibited a perseverance that was truly inspiring; he lived the last two years of his short life with the same grace and dignity with which he gave his now-famous "luckiest man" speech.
Meticulously researched and elegantly written, Jonathan Eig's Luckiest Man shows us one of the greatest baseball players of all time as we've never seen him before.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 6, 2005 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780743551519
- File size: 166858 KB
- Duration: 05:47:37
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Babe Ruth was the perfect baseball player for the Roaring '20s. But during the 1930s, the man identified most with baseball was Lou Gehrig, the talented but hard-working player who never missed a game until he took himself out of the New York Yankee lineup in 1939. He died in 1941 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a neurological disorder that now bears his name. Jonathan Eig's biography covers Gehrig's baseball career in detail, but his coverage of Gehrig's battle with ALS is what separates this from other biographies. Edward Herrmann is excellent as the reader. His voice takes on an almost youthful enthusiasm when he reads gushing newspaper reports. The audiobook includes an excerpt from Gehrig's farewell speech. The only criticism is that the abridgment is a little choppy in covering parts of the slugger's baseball career. R.C.G. 2006 Audie Award Winner (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine -
February 7, 2005
Although his record of playing in 2,130 consecutive Major League baseball games (from 1925 to 1939) was eventually broken in 1995, Gehrig is still remembered as one of the sport's greatest figures. But Eig, a Wall Street Journal
special correspondent, shows that the life of the"Iron Horse" wasn't quite as squeaky clean as Gary Cooper portrayed it to be in the 1943 film Pride of the Yankees
. Still, the blemishes are strikingly minor in comparison to those of today's star athletes: the worst anyone can really say about Gehrig is that he didn't like spending money, or that sometimes he'd just barely appear in a game in order to continue his streak. This meticulous biography also tracks the Yankee first baseman's close family ties and the tensions between his German immigrant mother and his publicity-savvy wife, as well as Gehrig's friction with teammate Babe Ruth. There's a certain monotony to the seasons during Gehrig's peak years, but Eig manages to find lively anecdotes. Moreover, the final chapters, in which Gehrig slowly dies from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, present his story's medical aspects with powerful sensitivity. Holding its own against recent high-profile baseball bios (e.g., Richard Ben Cramer's portrait of Joe DiMaggio), Eig's book reminds readers that Gehrig's accomplishments are inseparable from the dignity of his character. Photos. Agent, David Black. (Apr.)
Forecast:
Blurbs from Rudy Giuliani and Roger Kahn could make this a hot spring seller.
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