August 20, 1938 A Class Act

The Lane Tech High school baseball team was at home on June 26, 1920. 10,000 spectators assembled to watch the game at Cubs Park, now Wrigley Field. New York’s Commerce High was ahead 8–6 in the top of the 9th, when a left handed batter hit a grand slam out of the park. No 17-year-old had ever hit a baseball out of a major league park before, and I don’t believe it’s happened, since. The nation was about to know the name, of Lou Gehrig.

Gehrig was pitching for Columbia University against Williams College on April 18, 1923, the day Babe Ruth hit the first home run out of the brand new Yankee Stadium. Columbia would lose the game but Gehrig struck out seventeen batters that day, to set a team record.

The loss didn’t matter to Paul Krichell, the Yankee scout who’d been following Gehrig. Krichell didn’t care about…