Lou Gehrig: An American Baseball Player In The 1930's

Lou Gehrig was an American baseball player who played for the MLB team the New York Yankees. He was a first baseman and excellent batter who rose from the ranks of poverty to be one of the greatest baseball players ever known. Lou was raised by a family of immigrants and played football and baseball in high school through college, impressing scouts by striking out a total of 17 batters. He set the record for consecutive games played with 2,130 and got the nickname the iron horse for his resilience for his hardworking nature and playing through even the worst of pains.His career finally ended in 1939 when he was diagnosed with ALS (Aldrich). Lou Gehrig made the 20s roar through his incredible stats and achievements throughout his career. He had a total of 493 home runs, 1995 RBIs, 102 stolen bases, and a .340 batting average. 8001 at bats later, Lou had brought a total of 6 world series to New York,

First of all, the story is set in New York, and Gehrig played for the baseball team, the New York Yankees. Another connection is the time period, Gehrig played in the early 1920s, and that is when the story took place. In the story there are multiple mentions of baseball as a whole, including the supposedly rigged 1919 world series. The team he played for, the New York Yankees, rose to fame during the time period that this book was in. They won the world series in 1923, being led by Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. New York’s sports industry, especially the Yankees, drew many people to the city. It was a great place to live and was considered high priced so you would see people such as Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby, who were very rich move there. At the end of the novel the narrator, Nick, talks about how we need to keep moving forward “against the current” (Fitzgerald 180). This relates to Lou Gehrig who was nicknamed “The Iron Horse” for the way he fought through anything that faced him and never gave up