LOU GEHRIG

He was a Columbia boy, born in New York in 1903, and for a long while the town didn't quite know what it had. The Yankees had Ruth, and Ruth was the whole parade. Gehrig was the quiet float at the back — a left-handed first baseman, six foot, two hundred pounds, built like a bank vault and just as talkative.

Then the summers started stacking up. 1927, Murderers' Row, and the kid they called Columbia Lou takes the MVP: .373, 47 home runs, 175 runs batted in. 1931 he drives in 184. 1934 he wins the Triple Crown — .363, 49, 165 — and the writers finally admit the parade has two bands. 1936, another MVP, 49 homers, 167 runs scored. He finishes with .340, 2,721 hits, 493 home runs, 1,995 driven in, a .447 on-base and a .632 slug, and 1,888 times he crossed the plate himself.

The nickname was the Iron Horse, and it fit, because the whole trick of him was that he was simply there — every day, first base, same swing, no fuss, no headlines, no day off. A guy who punched the clock and then punched the ball.

They elected him to Cooperstown in 1939, the year his body quit on him, and he stood at the microphone in the Bronx and called himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. Henry Louis Gehrig. The horse that never left the field until it had to.