Luckiest Man

The definitive account of the life and tragic death of baseball legend Lou Gehrig. 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 Drawing on new interviews and more than two hundred pages of previously unpublished letters to and from Gehrig, Luckiest Man gives us an intimate portrait of the man who became an American hero: his life as a shy and awkward youth growing up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.

Jonathan Eig is a former senior writer for The Wall Street Journal. He is the New York Times bestselling author of five books, including Ali: A Life, Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season. Ali was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award and the James Tait Black Biography of the Year Award, and won the British Sports Book Awards Sports Book of the Year Award and the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing. He lives in Chicago with his wife and children.

Contents Prologue Chapter 1: The Survivor Chapter 2: "Babe" Gehrig Chapter 3: At Columbia Chapter 4: The Behemoth of Bing Chapter 5: Goodbye, Mr. Pipp Chapter 6: Coming of Age Chapter 7: Sinner and Saint Chapter 8: Barnstorming Days Chapter 9: A Charmed Life Chapter 10: The Crash Chapter 11: Iron Horse Chapter 12: Courtship Chapter 13: Out of the Shadows Chapter 14: A Night at the Opera Chapter 15: The Next Big Thing Chapter 16: Lord of the Jungle Chapter 17: Strange Times Chapter 18: The Longest Summer Chapter 19: Like a Match Burning Out Chapter 20: Last Chance Chapter 21: Pitchers Once Feared His Bat Chapter 22: The Bitter with the Sweet Chapter 23: Luckiest Man Chapter 24: The Bureaucrat Chapter 25: Our Boy Is Pretty Discouraged Chapter 26: He Was Baseball Epilogue Acknowledgments Appendix: Lou Gehrig's Career Statistics Notes Index