FAST FACTS

Birth name: Ludwig Heinrich Gehrig or Henry Louis Gehrig
Nickname: The Iron Horse
Birth date: June 19, 1903
Birth place: New York City
Death date: June 2, 1941
Death place: Riverdale, New York
Burial location: Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.

Height: 6'
Weight: 200 lbs
Hair color: Brown
Eye color: Blue

College: Columbia University
Major: Engineering
College Sports: Football and baseball
Football position: Fullback

Parents: Heinrich Gehrig and Christina Fack
Wife: Eleanor Twitchel

Team: New York Yankees
Position: First base, Outfield and Shortstop (for one at-bat in 1934)
Jersey number:4 (1st jersey number retired in American professional sports)
Batted: Left
Threw: Left

Hobbies while growing up: football, baseball, gymnastics, soccer, ice skating, swimming, billiards, marbles


Did You Know?

Gehrig attended Columbia University on a scholarship to play football, not baseball.

In early 1925, the Yankees offered to trade Gehrig to the Boston Red Sox for first baseman Phil Todt to repay Boston for the blockbuster Babe Ruth trade a few years earlier. The Red Sox turned the Yankees down.

July 4, 1939 was declared "Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day" at Yankee Stadium. It was on this occasion that Lou Gehrig made the famous fairwell speech, later featured in the film Pride of the Yankees, when he declared, "...today, I consider myself, the luckiest man on the face of the earth."