Lou Gehrig was a baseball legend—the Iron Horse, the stoic New York Yankee w was the greatest first baseman in history, a man whose consecutive-games stre was ended by a horrible disease that now bears his name. But as this definitive n biography makes clear, Gehrig's life was more complicated —and, perhaps, even m heroic—than anyone really knew. Drawing on new interviews and more than two hundred pages of previously unpi lished letters to and from Gehrig, Luckiest Man gives us an intimate portrait of t man who became an American hero: his life as a shy and awkward youth growing in New York City, his unlikely friendship with Babe Ruth (a friendship that allegec ended over rumors that Ruth had had an affair with Gehrig's wife), and his stel career with the Yankees, where his consecutive-games streak stood for more than h a century. What was not previously known, however, is that symptoms of Gehri, affliction began appearing in 1938, earlier than is commonly acknowledged. Lat aware that he was dying, Gehrig exhibited a perseverance that was truly inspiring; lived the last two years of his short life with the same grace and dignity with whi he gave his now-famous "luckiest man" speech. Meticulously researched and elegantly written, Jonathan Eig's Luckiest Man sho us one of the greatest baseball players of all time as we've never seen him before.

ISBN: 9780743268936