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What Lou Gehrig’s Mother Fed The New York Yankees To Make Them Better
The baseball legend may have gotten some of his success in part from a delicacy prepared by his mother
The New York Yankees of the 1920s and 1930s were among the most successful and dominant franchises in the history of sports, winning eight World Series during those two decades. Although their rosters were typically studded with stars and Hall of Famers, the source of their achievements may have come elsewhere. This included the mother of star first baseman Lou Gehrig, who believed a specialty food she prepared and fed the team helped make them better players.
Gehrig, also known as the “Iron Horse” because of his streak of once playing in a long-standing record of 2,130 consecutive games that stood for decades, remains one of the greatest players ever seen. The first baseman spent his entire 17-year career (1923–1939) with the Yankees. Winning two MVP awards and hitting a combined .340 with 493 home runs and 1,995 RBIs. He would have had even greater numbers if not having to retire prematurely at the age of 36 after suffering the initial stages of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which became known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. It killed him in 1941 when he was just 37. He was inducted in the Hall of Fame in 1939 upon retiring given his amazing contributions to the game.
Despite his remarkable physical talent, Gehrig’s mother believed that some of his success was due to a special dish she made for him, and later for his teammates as well. This was the delicacy of pickled eels. It was something he really enjoyed eating and the more she made for him the better he seemed to play.
After Mrs. Gehrig started bringing her pickled eels to the Yankees clubhouse, she found other players try them out of curiosity and then actually enjoy them. Sine the team was in the midst of a period of utter dominance, it became a popular story to talk about how the peculiar snack she was feeding the boys was helping them win.
In an interview that appeared in the August 6, 1927 issue of the Selma Times-Journal, Mrs. Gehrig spoke about how her secret baseball weapon of pickled eels came to be:
“Lou always has been crazy about pickled eels. He’d…
