Lou Gehrig ALS Diagnosis (1939)

St. Petersburg, Florida. Spring training, 1939. Joe DiMaggio stood behind the batting cage and watched Lou Gehrig swing at nineteen consecutive batting practice fastballs and miss every one of them.

Not foul them off. Miss them.

DiMaggio later recalled the pitches as "the kind Lou would normally hit into the next county." What he saw instead was a man whose timing had gone completely wrong -- a player who couldn't get his hands through the zone on pitches he'd been destroying for fourteen years. DiMaggio watched without saying anything. Nobody said anything. You didn't question the Iron Horse. But the alarm bells were ringing for anyone willing to hear them.

The Eight Games

Gehrig made it into the regular season. Of course he did. Whatever was happening to his body, he wasn't going to stop. He was Lou Gehrig.

Through eight games of the 1939 season, he went 4-for-28. One RBI. Zero home runs. A .143 batting average -- the worst stretch of his career, and not close. Fastballs he'd turned on for fifteen years were getting past him. Routine grounders at first base looked like work. On April 30, in his final game against Washington, he went 0-for-4 and said nothing. The Yankees won without him contributing.

Gehrig knew. He told the reporters afterward: "I haven't been a bit of good to the team since the season started."

Book-Cadillac Hotel, Detroit -- May 2, 1939

The Yankees traveled to Detroit after the Washington series. On the morning of May 2, Gehrig walked into manager Joe McCarthy's room at the Book-Cadillac Hotel and said what nobody else on the team had the nerve to say: "I'm benching myself, Joe. For the good of the team."

McCarthy asked if he was serious. He was.

That afternoon at Briggs Stadium, as Yankee captain, Gehrig carried the lineup card out to the umpires himself. Babe Dahlgren's name was at first base. His wasn't. The PA announcer addressed the crowd: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the first time Lou Gehrig's name will not appear on the Yankee lineup in 2,130 consecutive games."

The Detroit crowd -- an opposing crowd, in an opposing park -- stood and applauded for two full minutes. Gehrig sat on the bench with tears in his eyes.

The Yankees won the game 22-2. Dahlgren hit a home run and a double. Late in the game, Dahlgren walked to Gehrig on the bench and tried to convince him to get up and take the field -- to keep the streak technically alive. Gehrig shook his head. The streak was over. It had started on June 1, 1925, when a 21-year-old kid pinch-hit for shortstop Pee-Wee Wanninger. It ended fourteen years later with a quiet no in a visiting dugout in Michigan.

(Wanninger, by the way, was the shortstop who'd replaced Everett Scott at the end of Scott's then-record 1,307 consecutive games. Gehrig pinch-hit for the player who'd ended the record he was chasing. Baseball has always been better at irony than the people who write about it.)

Rochester, Minnesota -- June 13-19, 1939

For the next six weeks, Gehrig remained with the club in a non-playing role. He took the lineup card out before games. He sat in the dugout. He watched.

On June 13, Gehrig and his wife Eleanor traveled to Rochester, Minnesota, and checked into the Mayo Clinic. Six days of testing followed -- neurological exams, physical evaluations, the careful, systematic process of ruling everything out until only one answer remained.

The answer arrived on June 19. His thirty-sixth birthday.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. A disease that destroys the motor neurons that control voluntary muscle movement -- that controlled a swing so pure it had produced 493 home runs and a .340 career batting average. Terminal. No cure existed in 1939, and none exists now. The doctors gave him two to five years.

The Mayo Clinic released a public statement that day, calling it "a form of infantile paralysis" -- technically wrong, but almost no one in America had heard of ALS, and polio at least had a name people recognized. Within a few months, that would change completely.

Two days later, the Yankees announced his retirement.

What Came Next

The city of New York needed somewhere to put what it was feeling. Fifteen days after the diagnosis, it got one: Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day, July 4, 1939, between games of a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium. Sixty-one thousand, eight hundred and eight people.

At the July 4 ceremony, McCarthy spoke. He'd been fighting back tears all afternoon. When he got to Gehrig, he said: "Lou, what else can I say except that it was a sad day in the life of everybody who knew you when you came into my hotel room that day in Detroit and told me you were quitting as a ballplayer because you felt yourself a hindrance to the team. My God, man, you were never that."

He wasn't. Not once. Not for a single game of 2,130.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did Lou Gehrig's consecutive games streak end?

Gehrig's streak ended on May 2, 1939, when he removed himself from the lineup before a game in Detroit against the Tigers. He told manager Joe McCarthy he was sitting out "for the good of the team." The streak had begun on June 1, 1925, and finished at 2,130 consecutive games -- a record that stood until Cal Ripken Jr. broke it on September 6, 1995.

When was Lou Gehrig diagnosed with ALS?

Gehrig was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) on June 19, 1939 -- his 36th birthday -- at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He had arrived at the clinic on June 13 with his wife Eleanor. Six days of testing led to the diagnosis, which the clinic released publicly that same day. The disease destroyed the motor neurons controlling voluntary muscle movement and was terminal.

Why did Lou Gehrig bench himself in 1939?

Gehrig's ALS had progressed to the point where his coordination and bat speed had collapsed. Through eight games of the 1939 season, he was hitting just .143 with zero home runs and one RBI. He told Joe McCarthy he was "a hindrance to the team" -- though McCarthy pushed back on that forcefully at the July 4 farewell ceremony. In retrospect, Gehrig's 1938 season (.295, 29 HR, 114 RBI) had shown the first signs of decline, but the 1939 spring training deterioration made it impossible to ignore.

What were Lou Gehrig's stats in his final 8 games in 1939?

In his final 8 games of the 1939 season, Gehrig batted .143 (4-for-28) with zero home runs and one RBI. His final game was April 30, 1939, against Washington, where he went 0-for-4. Two days later, in Detroit, he removed himself from the lineup permanently.

How did ALS become known as Lou Gehrig's Disease?

When the Mayo Clinic released its diagnosis on June 19, 1939, almost no one in America had heard of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The clinic's statement even called it "a form of infantile paralysis" because ALS had no public identity. But Gehrig did. Within months of the diagnosis -- accelerated by his farewell speech on July 4, 1939 -- ALS began to be called Lou Gehrig's Disease in common usage. The name has never changed.