Lou Gehrig Begins the Streak

On June 1, 1925, Lou Gehrig entered a game against the Washington Senators as a pinch hitter, batting for shortstop Pee Wee Wanninger. He faced Walter Johnson in the eighth inning and flied out to left field. It was an unremarkable at-bat. Nobody in the stands at Griffith Stadium had any reason to remember it. But that plate appearance started the longest consecutive games streak in baseball history at the time, a run of 2,130 games that would not end until May 2, 1939.

The next day, June 2, manager Miller Huggins penciled Gehrig into the lineup at first base in place of Wally Pipp. The commonly told version has Pipp sitting out with a headache. The reality was rougher. Pipp had been beaned during batting practice and was dealing with the aftereffects of a concussion. He was also in a slump, and Huggins shook up the lineup by benching Pipp, Aaron Ward, and Wally Schang all at once. Pipp never reclaimed the job. He was traded after the 1925 season, and his name became shorthand for the danger of taking a day off.

Gehrig was 21 years old. He had played sparingly since joining the Yankees in 1923, unable to break through on a roster loaded with talent. Once he got Pipp's spot, he held it for fourteen years straight. He played through broken fingers, back spasms, and fevers. X-rays taken late in his career revealed seventeen different fractures in his hands that had healed on their own while he kept playing.

Over those 2,130 games, Gehrig batted .340 with 493 home runs and 1,995 RBIs. He won two MVP awards and six World Series titles. Cal Ripken Jr. eventually broke the streak in 1995, but for fifty-six years the record belonged to the quiet first baseman who stepped in for a pinch-hit on a June afternoon in Washington and never stepped out again.