Wally Pipp Tells The Real Story About How Lou Gehrig Took His Job And Became A Baseball HOFer
The New York Yankees moved on from one of their most establised stars and ended up with an all-time great as a replacement
In baseball, although Wally Pipp is a name, it has also been turned into a verb over time. Once a star first baseman for more than a decade with the New York Yankees, an injury that caused him to sit out a month opened the door for future Hall-of-Famer Lou Gehrig to take his spot so emphatically that he played exactly one more inning at his natural position for the team again. Instead of being bitter over losing his job, he remained positive in later years, and even provided compelling inside details about how one of the greatest stars in the history of the game got his start.
Baseball players can lose their jobs at any time. When Gehrig seized the starting first baseman job with the Yankees due to a teammate’s injury, and never gave it back, it became the stuff of lore because of the iconic career the “Iron Horse” went on to have. However, it is routinely downplayed exactly how good of a player Pipp was. If not for the injury and a somewhat early end to his own career, it’s not outside the realm of possibility to speculate that he could have had a case for the…
