Detroit Tigers Baseball Legend Charlie Gehringer On Earning His Nicknames And Learning From Ty Cobb
Detroit Tigers legend Charlie Gehringer is one of the most consistently excellent players to don a baseball uniform. The second baseman was a star of the first order and is still remembered for being among the best ever at his position. He was also an intensely funny man, who was dubbed with nicknames throughout his career, which began learning from his first big-league manager, Ty Cobb.
In 19 seasons all spent with Detroit (1924–1942), the left-handed hitting Gehringer batted a combined .320 with 184 home runs and 1,427 RBIs. He also collected 2,839 base hits, 1,775 runs scored, 181 stolen bases, 574 doubles and 146 triples. In addition to winning a batting title and being a six-time All Star, incredibly, he received MVP votes in 13 straight seasons (1928–1940), winning the award in 1937. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1949.
As a player, Gehringer became widely known by the nickname of “The Mechanical Man.” It turns out that the moniker was bestowed on him by another future Hall-of-Famer:
“Lefty Gomez gave me it. Lefty was talking about me to some newspaperman and he said, ‘You wind him up in the spring, set him for .330 and he goes the rest of the season that way.’”
