Ruth and Gehrig

March 21, 2018

Home » Commentary » Ruth and Gehrig

I like Lou Gehrig. He’s strong as hell and hits hard from the left side of the plate and soon becomes the second most feared hitter in baseball and forces pitchers to either give me good pitches to hit or walk me. What a future we have on the Yankees.

“I feel as though I should call you Mr. Ruth,” says Lou.

“You better not, kid. I’m Babe.”

“I’d be honored if you joined my parents and me for dinner.”

“Love to.”

I roll into the Gehrig’s Manhattan apartment and pump his father’s hand and hug his mother, saying, “Honored to meet you, Mrs. Gehrig.”

By the time we get to dessert, I’m calling her Mama Gehrig, as she ordered, and telling both parents, “Your son’s an incredible ballplayer.”

Lou’s the opposite of me away from the ballpark, he doesn’t stay out late and is shy around women, but we become great pals. And two years later, in 1927, we have the best team ever, and I break my record by hitting sixty home runs and Lou bashes forty-seven, drives in a hundred seventy-three runs, and wins the most valuable player award.

Each season the names Ruth and Gehrig get more famous and every year I hit more home runs than Lou. I don’t think he minds, especially since he knocks in more runs most years. Lou knows I try to look out for him. It bothers me that a star player and good looking guy shoves his back against walls in restaurants, bars, and at parties, and doesn’t talk to girls anxious to meet him. Finally, all the guys are happy to hear he’s got a girlfriend and it looks like they’ll marry.

Whether or not a man’s got girlfriends, he should have a wife. I marry the second time in 1929, and adopt Claire’s daughter Julia, and she adopts my daughter Dorothy. I know you’ve heard all the talk about my drinking and smoking and carousing but, believe me, I don’t come in at dawn much anymore and am happier than ever. I love Julia just as much as Dorothy, and I love being a dad.

One night in 1932 at a crowded Manhattan restaurant, a guy I trust shakes his head and says, “Babe, I guess you’ve heard.”

“What?”

“About Gehrig’s mother.”

“Is she okay?”

“Oh, she’s fine, Babe, talking more than ever about your family.”

“Haven’t heard anything like that,” I say.

“It was last week when Claire took Dorothy and Julia to that party for Yankee wives and kids.”

“Yeah.”

“And after Claire and the girls left, Mrs. Gehrig said, ‘I feel so bad for Dorothy. Claire doesn’t dress her nearly as well as she dresses Julia.’”

The next day at Yankee Stadium I see Lou putting on his pinstripes and say, “Hurry up. I need to talk to you privately.”

We walk down the tunnel and onto the field and I take his arm and pull him out along the right field line.

“I don’t like your mother saying things about my family.”

“What are you talking about?” Lou asks.

“Look, Dorothy’s five years younger and doesn’t need to dress up like a girl who’s sixteen.”

“I guess that’s right.”

“Then why’s your mother criticizing my wife?”

“My mother wouldn’t do that.”

“I’m telling you she did.”

“Who says so?”

I tell him.

“That guy’s a liar.”

“No, he’s giving it to me straight about your mother’s big mouth. Tell her to take care of her family and I’ll take care of mine.”

“Don’t insult my mother, Babe.”

“She’s the one doing the insulting.”

He spins and walks hard back into the dugout, and when I hit a home run that afternoon Lou Gehrig stays away from home plate, where we’ve so often shaken hands, and pretends he’s busy looking at bats and getting ready to hit.

Okay, I’ve got nothing to say to him, either. We hardly talk at the park and never away from it when the team’s traveling on trains and everyone’s playing cards and eating and later on relaxing at the hotel. That’s the way it stays all season as well as in 1933 and 1934, and then the Yankees send me to the Boston Braves for a final year I cut short because my body’s killing me, and I don’t say or write a word to Lou. He has four great seasons after I leave, and then in 1939 he gets real sick. He has what? Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a fatal illness, and there’s a Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day before a packed house in Yankee Stadium. I’m stunned how much weight Lou’s lost, but he’s still our Iron Horse who played every day for fourteen seasons, more than two thousand consecutive games. I played every game only one season in my career. I shake Lou’s hand and tell the crowd the Yankees should send him up into the mountains so he can catch every fish there. Then I hug him and say a few private words: “You’re Gehrig and I’m Ruth, and we’ll always be the most powerful pair in history.”

Babe Ruth Hugs his Former Teammate at Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day

“Basketball and Football” by George Thomas Clark

George Thomas Clark

George Thomas Clark is the author of Hitler Here, a biographical novel published in India and the Czech Republic as well as the United States. His commentaries for GeorgeThomasClark.com are read in more than 50 countries a month.

Recent Commentary

Books

HITLER HERE is a well researched and lyrically written biographical novel offering first-person stories by the Fuehrer and a variety of other characters. This intimate approach invites the reader to peer into Hitler’s mind, talk to Eva Braun, joust with Goering, Goebbels, and Himmler, debate with the generals, fight on land and at sea and…
See More
Art history and fiction merge to reveal the lives and emotions of great painters Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, William H. Johnson, Lee Krasner, and many others.
See More
This fast-moving collection blends fiction and movie history to illuminate the stimulating lives and careers of noted actors, actresses, and directors. Stars of this book include Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, Alfred Hitchcock, Clint Eastwood, Cate Blanchett, and Spike Lee.
See More
In this collection of thirty-eight chiseled short stories, George Thomas Clark introduces readers to actors, alcoholics, addicts, writers famous and unknown, a general, a lovelorn farmer, a family besieged by cancer, extraterrestrials threatening the world, a couple time traveling back to a critical battle, a deranged husband chasing his wife, and many more memorable people…
See More
Anne Frank On Tour and Other Stories
This lively collection offers literary short stories founded on History, Love, Need, Excess, and Final Acts.
See More
In lucid prose author George Thomas Clark recalls the challenges of growing up in a family beset by divorce, depression, and alcoholism, and battling similar problems as an adult.
See More
Let’s invite many of the greatest boxers and their contemporaries to tell their own stories, some true, others tales based on history. The result is a fascinating look into the lives and battles of those who thrilled millions but often ruined themselves while so doing.
See More
In a rousing trip through the worlds of basketball and football, George Thomas Clark explores the professional basketball league in Mexico, the Herculean talents of Wilt Chamberlain, the artistry of LeBron James, the brilliance of Bill Walsh, and lots more. Half the stories are nonfiction and others are satirical pieces guided by the unwavering hand of an inspired storyteller.
See More
Get on board this collection of satirical stories, based on news, about the entertaining but absurd and often quite dangerous events following the election of President Donald J. Trump in November 2016 until January 6, 2021, shortly after his loss to Joe Biden.
See More
Join Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and other notables on a raucous ride into a fictional world infused with facts from one of the roughest political races in modern U.S. history.
See More
History and literary fiction enliven the Barack Obama phenomenon from the African roots of his father and grandfather to the United States where young Obama struggles to control vices and establish his racial identity. Soon, the young politician is soaring but under fire from a variety of adversaries including Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh.
See More
These satirical columns allow startlingly candid Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush to explain their need to control the destinies of countries, regions, and, ultimately, the world. Osama bin Laden, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Karl Rove, and other notables, not all famous, also demand part of the stage.
See More
Where Will We Sleep
Determined to learn more about those who fate did not favor, the author toured tattered, handmade refuges of those without homes and interviewed them on the streets and in homeless shelters, and conversed with the poor in the United States, Mexico, Ecuador, and Spain, and on occasion wrote composite stories to illuminate their difficult lives.
See More
In search of stimulating stories, the author interviewed prostitutes in Madrid, Mexico City, Havana, and Managua and on many boulevards in the United States, and he talked to detectives and rode the rough roads of social workers who deal with human trafficking, which is contemporary slavery, and sometimes used several lives to create stories, and everywhere he ventured he witnessed struggles of those whose lives are bound In Other Hands.
See More
In compressed language Clark presents a compilation of short stories and creative columns about relationships between men and women.
See More