Lou Gehrig Hits Four Home Runs in One Game

On June 3, 1932, Lou Gehrig hit four home runs in a single game against the Philadelphia Athletics at Shibe Park. He became the first American League player to accomplish the feat in the twentieth century and only the third player in major league history to do it, after Bobby Lowe in 1894 and Ed Delahanty in 1896.

Gehrig's first three homers came off George Earnshaw, the Athletics' ace right-hander who had won 21 games the previous season, in the first, fourth, and fifth innings. Gehrig drove his fourth home run in the seventh off reliever Roy Mahaffey, completing the performance with a shot over the right-field wall.

He narrowly missed a fifth. In the ninth inning, Gehrig smashed a line drive to deep center field that Al Simmons caught at the wall. Manager Joe McCarthy later said it was the hardest ball Gehrig hit all day.

The Yankees won the game 20-13 in a wild contest that featured 36 hits between the two teams. Tony Lazzeri hit for the cycle in the same game. Normally that would headline the sports pages. Gehrig's four home runs overshadowed everything.

John McGraw, whose resignation from the Giants was announced that same day, saw the early editions of the newspapers and found Gehrig's performance filling the columns where his own retirement might have appeared. McGraw had managed for 30 years. Gehrig upstaged him with one swing after another.

The four-homer game reinforced what the baseball world already knew about Gehrig. He was the most productive hitter in the American League, capable of performances that belonged in fiction. He would hit 34 home runs that season and drive in 151 runs while batting .349. The Yankees swept the World Series that October, with Gehrig hitting .529 against the Cubs.