1903–1941 · New York Yankees first baseman · Baseball Hall of Fame, 1939
Henry Louis “Lou” Gehrig (19 June 1903 – 2 June 1941) played seventeen seasons at first base for the New York Yankees and was nicknamed “the Iron Horse” for a streak of 2,130 consecutive games that stood for fifty-six years. He took himself out of the lineup on 2 May 1939; the Mayo Clinic’s diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis was made public on his thirty-sixth birthday, 19 June, and the Yankees held Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day two weeks later. He died less than two years afterwards, and in the United States the disease still carries his name.