One Summer: America, 1927

smoke, drink or swear, and spent much time reading the Bible. He was probably the best-liked player on the team, both among players and sportswriters. He was a solid and dependable centre fielder and one of the best lead-off hitters of all time. In 1927 he would have the best season of his career. His 231 hits set a Yankees record. He was one of those elected to the Hall of Fame.
     
    Benny Bengough , reserve catcher. Though not much of a player – he appeared in just thirty-one games – Bengough was one of the most popular members of the team. He had been born in Liverpool, England, but grew up in Niagara Falls, New York, and had studied to be a priest before deciding instead to be a ballplayer. Bengough was completely bald. He went to bed one night with hair and woke up the next day with none. As a joke he would often pretend to run his fingers through his hair. Ruth in particular was very fond of him.
     
    Also worthy of note was Eddie Bennett, the team batboy. Bennett was a hunchback, and the players rubbed his hump for luck beforegames. Bennett had an almost uncanny reputation for bringing teams good fortune. He was batboy for the White Sox in 1919 when they won the pennant. Then he moved across to the Dodgers in 1920, and they won a pennant, too. In 1921 he came to the Yankees just at the time they started their dynasty, and won their own first pennant. By 1927, he was one of the most valued figures in baseball. Some accounts suggest that he was as much a kind of bench coach as a batboy.
    Finally, and above all, came Ruth and Gehrig, the most formidable double act baseball has ever produced. Lou Gehrig was doing something no human had ever done before: he was hitting home runs as well as Babe Ruth did. Together in 1927 they would hit a quarter of all home runs in the American League.
    On the face of it, Lou Gehrig possessed every quality a hero could require. He was gracious and good-looking, with a winning smile, deep blue eyes and a dimpled chin, was immensely talented, and had a physique that seemed to be hewn from granite. But he suffered from an almost total absence of personality and a crippling shyness, especially around women. At the age of twenty-three, he had never had a girlfriend and still lived at home. He claimed once in a magazine interview that he smoked sometimes and liked to drink a little beer, but hardly anyone ever saw actual evidence of that. Feeling sorry for him, his teammates Benny Bengough and Mark Koenig once had him up to their apartment so he could meet some girls. Gehrig arrived in a good suit, neatly pressed by his mother, and sat mutely on the sofa, too terrified to speak. He didn’t utter a word the whole evening.
    Like Lindbergh, Gehrig was not a great mixer, but whereas Lindbergh was happily self-contained, Gehrig was almost unnaturally solitary. He would often go to an amusement park and ride the roller coaster alone for hours. He paid little attention to his appearance, and was notable for refusing to wear a coat or other outerwear; even in the most frigid weather he walked about in shirtsleeves. He hated to make a fuss, which is why Jacob Ruppert wasable to pay him no more than he paid many reserve players. Gehrig always accepted whatever salary Ruppert offered him, so Ruppert always offered a poor one.
    Gehrig was a native New Yorker, born in 1903 to poor German immigrant parents in Yorkville. At his birth, according to some accounts, he weighed a whopping fourteen pounds. (His mother was a block of a woman.) Gehrig grew up speaking German. His father rarely worked and was probably an alcoholic. Mrs Gehrig had three other children, but all died in infancy, so Lou grew up not just as an only child but as the only surviving child, which made his mother even more clinging and fretful.
    Gehrig was extraordinarily devoted to his mother. Where other ballplayers took their wives to spring training, Gehrig took his mother. On road trips, he wrote to her daily. Before departure, they would kiss and hug for ten minutes, to the acute discomfort of teammates nearby. On an exhibition tour of Japan, Gehrig spent nearly all of his free time, and much of the money he earned, buying gifts for his mother.
    Gehrig was powerfully built from childhood and was a natural athlete. By the time he got to Commerce High School, he could hit a baseball harder and further than any high-school player any New York City coach had ever seen. In 1920 Commerce was invited to Chicago to play the best