My Luke and I

A non-traditional view of baseball's Lou Gehrig. Full of background information especially Eleanor's that has not been seen elsewhere.

Although it never affected their play on the field, Yankee teammates Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth had a very cool relationship. While both respected each other for their outstanding baseball ability, Gehrig was shy, a family man and lived life small. On the other hand, Ruth lived life large, eating, drinking and sexing to the utmost. This major difference in their off the field personalities was a natural source of tension between them. While the title indicates that the book is primarily about the relationship between Lou Gehrig and his wife, it can best be considered as composed of three parts. A biography of Lou Gehrig before he married followed by a biography of Eleanor Gehrig (Twitchell) before she married and then the story of their life together. Since it deals almost solely with the personal details, this is only incidentally a baseball book. Eleanor Twitchell grew up in Chicago in the years when the crime gangs were active; there were regular killings although the mobsters had the decency to only kill other mobsters. Twitchell is very matter-of-fact in her descriptions of these events, which are more of historical interest than anything else. From her perspective, this is a love story, one of great joy followed by great sorrow. Lou Gehrig was a beloved man, both by his wife and by the public. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is still known as Lou Gehrig's disease, a tribute to how well liked Gehrig was. If your interest is in baseball, then there is very little here that will interest you. The small amount about baseball and the even smaller amount about Gehrig's relationship with his teammates is not enough to trigger even a passing fancy. However, if you are interested in a true love story set in baseball in the early half of the twentieth century, then this is a book that will excite you.

I first read The Luckiest Man, a new book out about Lou Gehrig which heavily quotes from this book written by Lou Gehrig's wife before her death. It is such a fun book! I LOVED all the info about Chicago in the Roaring Twenties (Mrs. Gehrig was a party-girl flapper) and also in the Depression of the 1930s, when she marries baseball great Lou Gehrig. It is a very honest book. Mrs. Gehrig writes extensively about her sour relationship with Lou's mom, who was very controlling. They got married on the spur of the moment so she couldn't step in and ruin the wedding! His illness and quick death from ALS is covered in the last chapters. It's obvious she loved him very much. Babe Ruth gets quite a lot of mention, as well as what being a baseball player back then was like. Before all the huge money that baseball players make nowadays, players would play all of over the country against non-professional teams in order to make more money. Lou was so grateful to be making any money after a poor immigrant childhood, that he almost never tried to negotiate his contracts. He just signed for whatever the team offered him. Consequently, Babe Ruth made twice as much as he did! Lou never stayed out past the team's curfew, while Babe Ruth partied all night with girls. Lou Gehrig comes across as a standup guy, worthy of honor. Not too many athletes these days are. He is humble, quiet and gracious in the face of adversity (his paralyzing and fatal illness).

Although the world thought it already knew about the love story between the baseball player Lou Gehrig and the Chicago socialite Eleanor Twitchell from the 1943 film "The Pride of the Yankees," made only two years after the Yankee great died of the disease that now bears his name, his widow decided to tell their story. As told to reporter Joe Durso, Eleanor Gehrig's "My Luke and I" provides more details on what is only touched upon in the classic sports biopic starring Gary Cooper and Teresa Wright.In the film there was some tension between Gehrig's German immigrant mother and his new bride. In her book Eleanor Gehrig goes into depth on the strained relationship between the two women that put Lou Gehrig in the middle. Given the psychological dimensions of any women trying to take an obvious "mama's boy" away from his mother, the fact that Eleanor called her husband "Luke" is extremely interesting since it suggests the creation of a persona that was all her own. Gehrig's birth name was Heinrich Louis Gehrig, the first name being Americanized into Henry at some point. If he was "Lou" to his fans and teammates while "Louie" to his parents, then "Luke" was the husband that Eleanor had all to herself. Or at least as much as that was possible given the fierce competition for her husband's time given his fame and family.Eleanor Gehrig also provides insights into what happened to the relationship between her husband and Babe Ruth, which deteriorated during a good will trip to Japan. I always thought it was ironic that although it was Gehrig who was in Ruth's overpowering shadow that it was the Bambino who ended up being upset by what was happening between them and their families. But ultimately it is not baseball but the relationship between Eleanor and her "Luke" that makes this walk down memory lane worth reading, which is why this book appeals as much to romantics as it does to baseball fans. Usually when you read a book about a baseball player you envision yourself doing what they did and hitting home runs to win World Series games. But when I read this book what I wanted to do was to find someone to live happily ever after with for the rest of my life, however long that might end up being. "My Luke and I" was turned into the 1977 television movie "A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story" starring Blythe Danner and Edward Hermmann, just in case there was any doubt what this book was really about. The movie did not air until January of 1978 when it was shown opposite the Super Bowl, having been bumped from its original October air date by a the final game of the American League Championship series in which the New York Yankees score three runs in the ninth inning to defeat the Kansas City Royals, 5-3, and win their second consecutive American League pennant.