Perhaps you heard that Brett Favre's consecutive streak of games ended on Monday night. His 297 starts was a NFL record, one that will likely stand for a while unless Peyton Manning has another 100 straight games in him. Interestingly, Favre's historic mark ended in the same city where another celebrated streak came to an end. Nursing a shoulder injury, the Minnesota Vikings quarterback finally sat out a game at Ford Field in Detroit. As more than a few outlets noted, that's about one mile away from the former site of Tiger Stadium, where the New York Yankees' Lou Gehrig took himself out of the lineup at what was then called Briggs Stadium.
Gehrig had played in 2,130 consecutive games before May 2, 1939. He'd began the season in a 4-for-28 slump and wasn't playing his usual good defense at first base. Even in spring training, his once-formidable power had disappeared, his baserunning skills had deteriorated.
In the lobby of the Book Cadillac hotel before their game against the Tigers, Gehrig told Yankees manager Joe McCarthy that he thought he should be taken out of the lineup.
From the New York Times the next day:
"Lou just told me he felt it would be best for the club if he took himself out of the line-up," McCarthy said following their private talk. "I asked him if he really felt that way. He told me he was serious. He feels blue. He is dejected. I told him it would be as he wished. Like everybody else I'm sorry to see it happen. I told him not to worry. Maybe the warm weather will bring him around."
Approximately a week earlier, James Kahn wrote in the New York Graphic that he believed there was "something wrong" with the Yankees' first baseman.
From "Lou Gehrig: A Biography" by William C. Kashatus:
"I mean something physically wrong... I don't know what it is, but I'm satisfied that it goes far beyond his ball playing. I have seen ballplayers 'go' overnight. But they were simply washed up as ballplayers. It's something deeper in this case, though."
Kahn went on to write that Gehrig was still hitting the ball squarely, swinging as hard as he could, yet it would just loop over the infield.
As we know, of course, Kahn was right. Gehrig didn't just need to rest an older, tired body. Six weeks later, with his physical condition and coordination continuing to deteriorate, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neuromuscular disease that causes muscle weakness and atrophy, and eventually a loss of motor function.
Gehrig still brought out the lineup card to home plate that Tuesday afternoon in Detroit. But Babe Dahlgren served as the Tarvaris Jackson of the day as his name was penciled in at first base. (There's the trivia question you can impress everyone with while you're home for the holidays.) When the Briggs Stadium announcer noted Gehrig's absence from the game, the Detroit fans gave him a standing ovation. (The Lions fans at Monday's game did no such thing.)
In late June, Gehrig officially retired after 17 major league seasons, 2,721 hits, 493 home runs, 1,995 RBIs, and those 2,130 consecutive games played. That record stood for 56 years, until Cal Ripken broke it in 1995.
Gehrig's streak was one of the most hallowed records in baseball history. Seventy-one years later, it's still held in reverence, even though it was broken by Ripken.
Will Favre's run be viewed in the same legendary regard seven decades from now?
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