by Paul Gallico
They talked a little. The antennae of Eleanor’s instincts began to yield messages broadcast by the silent boy. He was so unlike the other ball players. His voice was loud and gross, but his soul was meek and sensitive and sweet. The muscles of his back bulged out the lines of his coat. Shy melancholy and unexpressed yearning illuminated his eyes.
When later in the evening Eleanor tried to find him to match up the rather haunting impression he had made upon her, he had gone home to his hotel. As always he was in strict training and went to bed early to be well slept out for the game the next day.
The party broke up quite late. Eleanor couldn’t forget the big guy with the dimples, the wavy hair and the smitten eyes. The other girls were saying, “Gee, Eleanor! What did you do to Gehrig? He never looks twice at a girl and you had him following you around all evening.”
But Eleanor didn’t need the girls to tell her that Gehrig had been interested. What intrigued and then bothered her was that SHE was feeling a little strange herself.
And on an impulse, at four o’clock in the morning she called Gehrig up at his hotel. She thought perhaps if she said … “I just wanted to say … ‘Good night’ to you, because I missed saying it at the party,” he might take a hint and say something like … “Couldn’t we get together some time soon so that we can say good night,” etc.
To put it as Eleanor succinctly phrased it … “It certainly worked out swell.”
She heard a fuzzy, sleep-sodden voice say … “Hello!” She then made her speech. There was a mild crash as Lou apparently knocked things off the night table while attempting to put on the light, and then a horrified gasp … “Good God! Do you know what time it is?”
This was followed by the unmistakable click of the receiver being replaced in its cradle.
And that, thought Eleanor, is that.
The next morning at her office in the Fair Grounds she had the shock of her life. She was telephoning and happened to look out of the window. It was shortly after nine o’clock. Lou was standing down on the sidewalk grinning up at her and waving enticingly to her to come down.
Eleanor was on second base, so to speak, but she had got there, by what in baseball parlance is known as a delayed steal. It had taken no more than four or five hours for it to penetrate through Lou’s Germanic skull that maybe this girl liked him a little if she took the trouble to call him up so early in the morning.
Eleanor reports that she snapped her French heels and burst a shoulder strap getting down there before he could get away. They had lunch. They had dinner. They spent the evening wandering about the Fair. Lou was a very shy man. They went on the roller coaster together. When they came to the big drop where the least a girl could expect was an arm around, he clutched the handrail of the rocket car with both hands and hollered … “Hang on, Eleanor, this is a beaut.”
When she tried delicately to steer him to the dark and cozy confines of the Red Mill he sidetracked her to the baseball bathing booth and the concession where you knock things off shelves with baseballs. He cleaned out both booths, nearly wrecking them, completely exhausted himself, covering himself with sweat, grime and glory, and his Eleanor he buried beneath a mountain of hideously painted bisque Kewpie dolls and rag horses.
It was Lou’s small boy’s way of showing that he cared.
They began writing to one another. Eleanor visited him in his home at New Rochelle and met the family, during the winter. When Lou returned to Chicago with the Yankees on their first Western swing in 1933, he proposed to his Eleanor and she accepted him.
It wasn’t quite as simple as that, though, because Lou was so shy and inhibited and so super conscious of his own lack of worth. He was desperately in love with Eleanor and she knew it. What woman doesn’t? She also knew that she was vitally in love with him. And she was unquestionably the stronger of the two.
The February before they became engaged, Lou had a hold-out session with the Yankees and he wrote to Eleanor that he was determined to fight out his differences with Ruppert even if he never played baseball again, claiming that he could always drive a truck or become a good chauffeur.
With extraordinary wisdom, Eleanor began to build up his self confidence. Her love had diagnosed his case at once. She began to impress him with some sense of his values and importance, made him see that not only was he a man of great personal charm, but that he was also a great figure in the world of sports, Ruth or no Ruth.
Gehrig proposed to Eleanor at her home in Chicago, and Eleanor said that it was difficult to get it out of him. He fumbled and garbled words, and went through all the sweet agonies of a shy man trying to declare himself. Eleanor helped him. She said she was practically finishing his sentences for him. She also said that he probably got the quickest “YES” on record.
10
THE COURSE AND THE OBSTACLE
The obstacle to the course of this simple love story was Mom. Mom had been queen too long. The newspapers the length and breadth of the land had written of her and pictured her as Lou’s sweetheart. It was only human that she resented “that girl from Chicago.”
We have seen how as Lou rose to success he took his mother along with him down the rosy paths of publicity and fame. In short, he spoiled her. She was unable to give way gracefully to the girl from Chicago who in addition to being an interloper and Lou’s dearly beloved was also modern in her ways and her views.
Although Lou was thirty and was making a considerable amount of money, his love affair had to be conducted almost clandestinely. If they wanted to be alone together they would have to sneak off to achieve it. Mom did not mean to be a nuisance. It was just that she could not bear to be left out in the cold where Lou was concerned.
And much as Lou loved his mother, his adoration of his Eleanor was out of this world. All the affection that had been denied him as a child, all the limitless affection he had to give on his own part and which had never had a chance to expand, came to a head in and about Eleanor.
Strong as Mom was, Lou was stronger when it came to his determination to marry Eleanor, and the wedding was set for September, 1933, at the Long Island home of a friend of Eleanor’s.
They were to live in an apartment in New Rochelle so as to be near Mom. Mom of course couldn’t understand why Lou didn’t go on living in the house with them so that she could cook and look after him as usual.
There must have been some sort of argument, or quarrel, or family row over Eleanor, because one morning, Lou came over to the apartment where Eleanor in a house dress, smudged and work-dirty, with her hair down over her eyes and her nose shiny, was supervising the work of carpenters, plumbers, painters, electricians and carpet layers.
Lou was in a sweat and a panic that somehow he might lose Eleanor if he did not marry her at once, that Mom, or something or somebody would do something to interfere. Or perhaps he was just suffering from that fear to which much-in-love grooms-to-be are prone, that any moment, the desired one is liable to vanish into thin air and never never return.
At any rate, big, loud, tumultuous Lou came huffing and stamping into the house and said:
“El … why can’t we be married right away now? You know I can’t go for one of those stiff Long Island weddings. How would I look at one of those? It’s just between us, anyway, El, and why do we have to wait? I don’t know what Mom is liable to do when she gets excited. Let’s do it now.”
Eleanor had rather wanted that Long Island wedding. She had been looking forward to it. But she understood her man, and what is more she loved him. She understood that this proposal of a quick, do-it-now marriage was more than just the impatience of a lusty swain. Lou was declaring himself out from the parental nest and was doing a job of untying the apron strings to which he had bound himself for so long. She knew that he felt that once he had her legally that he would feel safe. And whatever qualms she had about what life would be like, wedded to all the Gehrigs, they vanished now. Here was a boy who with her help and guidance would stand squarely on his own feet.
They went into a whirlwind of action and within two hours, her friend was over from Long Island, Fred Lindner, a pal of Lou’s who lived in White Plains drove over, and the Mayor of New Rochelle climbed into his cutaway official stovepipe. Lou was in an open shirt, Eleanor in her housedress. The ceremony began. The plumber and his helper shouted … “Watch it there! Comin’ through!” and marched through the wedding bearing a radiator to be installed, the carpenters hammered, the electricians threaded their wires and tested bells and buzzers, the Mayor intoned with dignity … “Do you, Lou, take this girl Eleanor, in sickness and in health, in …”
At which point, a pop-eyed carpet layer suddenly looked up, spit out a mouthful of tacks and yelled … “Hey, fellers! Ya know what’s going on here? Lou Gehrig’s bein’ married right under our nose.”
Work stopped. All the men crowded around, took off their hats respectfully and stood in attendance while Lou and Eleanor were joined together in holy matrimony.
And then they just made the Yankee Stadium in time, thanks to motorcycle escort provided by the Mayor. For marriage or not, it wouldn’t do for Lou to miss the starting lineup. He was in the way of having quite a record for consecutive games played.
It is recorded that out of sheer exuberance, and the sight of his wife sitting in a field box with a wedding band on her finger, Lou rode one out of the park that day.
11
HAPPILY EVER AFTER
And so they were married and lived happily ever after.
Or at least, they lived happily, because the shadow of their tragedy was not yet over them. Lou who had never known much gayety or frivolity began to learn to enjoy life.
If you want to know how a ball player lives when he is at home, I can give you Lou Gehrig’s time table.
Up at ten in the morning for a large breakfast, or brunch, since he would not eat again until evening, consisting of three or four eggs with bacon or ham, sausages on the side, with wheatcakes, toast, fruit and coffee. He left for the ball park at noon so as to be there for batting practice which started at 1 P.M. Usually Eleanor went with him. The game would be over around five in the afternoon when they would drive home. They rarely went out to dinner during the season. Lou liked to eat at home, and more, he liked to be in Eleanor’s company. He liked people, but he seemed to be jealous once he was married, jealous of every moment that deprived him of the company of his girl. He had been so long finding her. It had, so he thought, been such a precarious exploit, winning her. (Eleanor said: “Actually he would have had to have shot me to have got rid of me, or escaped me.”) And so he was quite content to be alone with her. After dinner they would go to a movie, though in later years, Lou developed a deep and honest love and appreciation of fine music and used to like to go to concerts.
But for the flavor of the marriage, you must come with me into their home, and see this big guy with the loud voice, the bright friendly eyes and the dimples at the corners of his mouth, stamping into the house like a half-tamed earthquake and yelling for his dinner.
“Hey Pal! What’s for eating? Got any Hamburgers? Yeeeeow! I gotta have Hamburgers!” Then he would storm into the kitchen and lift up all the tops of the pots and see what was cooking.
Lou wasn’t foul mouthed or a curser, though he could refer to someone as a sonovabitch, in the normal, even course of conversation, but he always smiled when he said it.
At home he was as playful as a big dog. He’d call for his Eleanor with a howl of … “Where’s the old bat? Hey, Hag, come on out here and fight like a man.”
To him she was the old bat, the old bitch, the bag and the battle-axe, but when people were around he called her “Pal,” or “My pal!”
He was always “Lou” to her, except in the more earnest moments of baiting one another when he became The Monster, Dracula, or Frankenstein.
Gehrig was full of spirits and loved rough house, and big as he was, he and Eleanor would wrestle on the floor, pull each other’s hair, or even box. Once, by accident, Eleanor let one go and caught Lou right on the button. He went down and stayed down. When he got unfuzzed a few seconds later, his laughter nearly took the roof off the house.
They were close mentally and physically. Gehrig never talked about his baseball exploits at home. He would talk about what “We” or the team had done, but never of his own individual achievements.
Eleanor was always thinking up ways of amusing him, and Lou adored it, and her for it. When he travelled, he would always get off the train at Harmon, and she would drive over from Larchmont where they moved to, and pick him up. It was a never failing ritual. Once when he arrived, the car was there with a chauffeur, but no Eleanor. Lou was furious. He burned to a crisp. Then he grew morose. It was obvious that Eleanor didn’t love him anymore otherwise she wouldn’t have forgotten him to play bridge or gab with females.
He got into the car. Two miles down the road, two outlandish-looking females with long red noses, and Victorian costumes stood by the side of the road, thumbing Lou’s car for a ride. When the chauffeur stopped they piled in and all over Lou. It was Eleanor and a girl friend.
Slowly, and with infinite patience, as the marriage grew in strength and beauty, Eleanor brought him along, little by little, to improve his dressing and his tastes. Whereas, when they first met he went only to bad movies, after three years or four years he had progressed to where he loved good shows, concerts, opera and dining out at places like “21.”
He had no interest in money other than something to be used to gain security for his family and Eleanor. He never questioned his wife’s bills. For himself, the only things he ever spent money on was fishing tackle. He loved any kind of fishing, deep sea preferred, chasing the big stuff with rod and reel, but when that wasn’t practical, or possible, he was just as content to bottom fish for flounders with handlines, or gig for eels.
Once he wanted a second hand fishing boat. It was only $175. But before closing the deal he went home first and talked it over with Eleanor, wondering whether it would be all right for him to buy it. It was little things like that that used to break Eleanor’s heart. She was a creature who got much joy out of life and she wanted her husband to have his joys too. But it was hard to get him to take them. His old habits of self denial were hard to break or even soften.
And further to feel their marriage … they quarrelled, or rather had spats like all people, and were hurt for a little while, and then made up. But there was a curious quality to their differences. Eleanor might speak impatiently or sharply to Lou about something. And Lou wouldn’t speak to her for three days. And Eleanor would go around frightened to death, saying to herself … “Now I’ve gone and done it. Why did I have to say that? He’s probably so mad at me he’s getting ready to walk out. Twitchell, why can’t you keep your big mouth shut?”
But Gehrig, it would turn out, wasn’t angry. HIS silence would be the result of a morose conviction that Eleanor was about to leave HIM. He would say … “Gee, El, I don’t understand, honestly, why you keep on with a mug like me. Why don’t you get yourself some regular fellow and not waste your time with a sap who does nothing but make you unhappy all the time? I’m just no good, and I know it. I don’t deserve you. I’m just a miserable Sourpuss who continually causes you grief and hasn’t the qualifications to hold your respect.…”
Two minutes of that and Eleanor would be in tears and would have to start building him up all over again and tell him how wonderful he really was to her. And the perpetual honeymoon would get a fresh start. Life was never really dull around the Gehrigs. And the bitter tragedy they were eventually called upon to face and which they did face so gallantly was still far away.
12
THE FULL MEASURE OF SUCCESS
Success now came to Henry Louis Gehrig, the American born son of immigrant German parents, success in full measure.
His struggles, as it were, had ended. He had fame, money, popularity, love and companionship, and, thanks to his wife, even a little self assurance.
The boy who had been something of a rough, uncultured ball player with tastes that seldom rose above a “B” movie, found his interest awakened in music, books and the theatre. To what is at best an abnormal life—that of the itinerant baseball player—his wife brought as much normalcy as possible.
The awkward boy who could neither bat nor field as a youngster, had by his unswerving persistency, his gnawing ambition, tenacity and iron will power, made himself into the greatest first baseman in the history of organized baseball.
I remember writing years ago about Gehrig … “To my mind there is no greater inspiration to any American boy than Lou Gehrig and his career. For if the awkward, inept and downright clumsy Gehrig, that I knew and saw in the beginning, could turn himself into the finest first base covering machine in all baseball, through sheer drive and determination, then nothing is impossible to any man or boy in this country.”
Men like Connie Mack and Hughie Fullerton, hoary baseball encyclopedias, who spanned generations of players, unhesitatingly placed Lou Gehrig at first base on any “All” team.
When the “All Star” games were played each summer, there was bitter controversy about many of the positions and who should play them. But it was almost automatically conceded that Lou Gehrig should play first base for the American Leaguers.
In 1934 Lou won the triple batting championship of the American League, and gave it to his Eleanor for the First Anniversary present. He led the League in hitting that year, batting .363, hitting 49 home runs, and driving in 165 runs.
It is interesting to note Ruth’s waning record for the same year. He hit .288, knocked 22 out of the park, and batted in 84 runs.