Here are some customer reviews of
Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig
: This is what baseball should be all about. Completely steroid-free. A classic. One of the baseball books that I highly recommend this year. Ironically, another is BLOOD FUED: The Red Sox, the Yankees and the Struggle of Good vs Evil. Two great summer reads!
 I have not read any other works on Lou Gehrig, save a couple of juvenile biographies many years ago, but it's difficult to imagine a book that could relate the Iron Horse's life better than "Luckiest Man."
Jonathan Eig has written a "couldn't-put-it-down" account of a sports hero almost too good to be true. One of the best aspects of the book is that, while this is essentially a "warts and all" biography, the author doesn't try to create warts where none existed. If the worst one can say of Gehrig was that he was a mama's boy, a cheapskate, and a corporation man lacking in both rebelliousness and "color," than it's the worst one can say about millions of young Americans, especially the immigrants and sons of immigrants, of his generation. Eig realizes that the drama of Gehrig's life doesn't need to be invented or enhanced. If anything, he patiently understates the tragedy that Gehrig faced as his powerful physique was ravaged by an incurable disease, as a superb athlete helplessly watched his athleticism deteriorate and his career, then his life, destroyed.
As portrayed by Eig, there is something almost childish about the optimism with which Gehrig confronted his debilitation and death. But it was not in Gehrig to be cynical, or to feel sorry for himself, at least not for long. One wonders if he could have, or would have, made his "luckiest man" speech in the weeks before he died (he actually made his famous remarks almost two years before his death, when he genuinely believed he might beat ALS). Yet one finds in those glorious words the gratitude and generosity that Gehrig seems to have always felt for his family, his teammates, and the fans who gave him the opportunity to make a comfortable and enjoyable living playing a game he loved.
Eig has plumbed all the expected source materials, including the memories of many old ballplayers who knew Gehrig, and he's come up with new sources (correspondence between Gehrig and one of his principal physicians) that shed more light on the man. He also does a fine job in capturing the complex relationships that Gehrig had with his mother, his wife, and his teammates (especially Babe Ruth)-- again, reporting the facts and neither romanticizing nor villainizing any of them.
In short, this is terrific book, both as an entertaining read and as as chronicle of a sports superstar from a more innocent age. Eig avoids comparisons of Gehrig to modern-day sports stars, but I will say that Gehrig's feats on the ball field, and his modest grace off the field, would be becoming to any ballplayer today.
P.S. -- I have to mention one error: Eig refers a couple of times to the former commissioner of baseball as Judge Kenesaw "Mountain" Landis, but the quotation marks are unnecessary. Landis's given name was taken from an 1864 Civil War battle in Georgia, at Kennesaw Mountain.
Lou Gehrig was a quiet, shy and intensely private person. Sportwriters of the time found him colorless, and never regarded him as a go-to guy for a good quote, as they did more extroverted teammates like Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio. Although a home-run hitter second only to Ruth, and peerless at batting runs in, he is chiefly remembered today, as a player, for having played in a then-record 2,130 consecutive games, which until Cal Ripken Jr. broke it in 1995 stood as the most boring record of all.
But as Jonathan Eig makes clear in this meticulously researched biography, Gehrig was not only one of the greatest Yankees between the white lines, he was one of the finest off the field as well. Eig brings colorfully alive the vanished world of early baseball, and succeeds remarkably in getting into the interior life of one of baseball's most private characters. Gehrig emerges largely as his contemporaries probably saw him: a decent, gentlemanly exemplar of the values of hard work and good sportsmanship. But, basing his narrative largely on newly discovered private correspondence and on interviews with those who knew him, Eig also depicts Gehrig as an unexpectedly complex person who was at once competitive, cheap, and self-effacing, who worried constantly about fulfilling his obligations to the fans, his teammates, and his family, and who loved baseball for its own sake but cared little for the trappings of celebrity. And the courage and lack of self-pity with which he faced his personal tragedy make him even a greater hero than did his considerable exploits on the field.
This is destined to be the definitive biography of one of the greatest Yankees of all. Essential reading for any baseball fan.
Gehrig's place in baseball history is permanent, as a man he was admirable, but as a biographical subject he is difficult: there were no hair-raising stories of drinking and brawling and cheating and womanizing. If he did not die young of a terrible disease which now bears his name, he would have been remembered as a physically-gifted man who played hard for 2,131 consecutive games and then went home to his parents and wife. He had no vices except cigarettes. His main diversions were fishing and cards. How does one make this man come to life?
Eig does so masterfully by placing Gehrig squarely in his times. This biography is a general survey of baseball and society in the 1920s and 1930s with Gehrig at the center. Eig describes the barnstorming baseball teams of the teens and 1920s, the advent of night baseball, contract negotiations, baseball strategy in the early "deadball" era, and the Rise and Fall of Babe Ruth. He introduces innumerable character studies of those who formed the constellation of Gehrig's life - his parents Christiana and Henry, his managers Miller Huggins and Joe McCarthy, Yankee boss Jacob Ruppert, innumerable teammates, his ambitious wife Eleanor, and ultimately his doctors at the Mayo Clinic and New York.
It takes a while to warm up to the Iron Man - early on, his appears as a self-absorbed jock, albeit talented and hard-working. His fairly blank profile during the early years makes for a slow beginning. But over time, Eig's narrative reveals what a remarkable man Gehrig was. He was plagued by shyness and insecurities, was personally ambitious but always a teammate; and worked best within the top-down hierarchy of owners-managers-players. In his Farewell Speech at Yankee Stadium in 1939, he thanked, among many people in his life, his mother-in-law "who takes sides with you in squabbles against her own daughter." How many mother-in-laws have been recognized in front of thousands at such bittersweet time?
Eig turns pitch perfect phrases - describing amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) as "shutting down the body's functions, one-by-one, like a night-watchman switching off factory-floor lights." He brings tiny details back to the reader - the weather during key games, the flapping of a flag, the pull of a muscle. This picture-painting is crucial in telling the story of a non-flashy athlete.
Has there been a public life as ironical as The Iron Man's? He was a man-of-few-words who will forever live through his tear-jerking Farewell Speech; a wall-flower at parties who rose to fame during the flashy, publicity-crazed 1920s; and a superb physical specimen with arms the width of most men's thighs who died at 36 of a muscle-wasting disease that would bear his name. Eig tells his story with patience and humanity. The Gehrig that emerges was given a very bad break, but made the most of his time on Earth in a way few men ever have.
Jonathan Eig does a wonderful job painting a human portrait of Lou Gehrig and evoking an earlier time. His rendering of Gehrig isn't designed to mythologize the man; it offers a more complete picture than that. Still, you can't help but gain greater respect and admiration for The Iron Horse.
This book -- like Tom Stanton's "Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America" -- is a welcome diversion from baseball's current steroids scandal. Along with "Three Nights in August," these three rate as my favorites this baseball season.
|
