Lou Gehrig's Pickled Eels

The forgotten human side of the superhero

Lou Gehrig's Pickled Eels

When we talk about the 1927 New York Yankees, we usually think about the efficiency of their offensive attack.

Murder’s Row, we call them — the most potent and dangerous offense of all time. And the name was an apt one. There are numerous newspaper articles from 1927 that talk about the team using terms such as “homicide squad” and other fun variations on the theme.

You probably don’t think much about pickled eels. Although you probably should.

This article ran in papers across the country starting in early August 1927:

From Roseburg News-Review (Roseburg, Oregon), August 13, 1927, page 5

Now, it’s one thing to talk about an odd trend that popped up in the hot summer of 1927. It’s another thing entirely, though, when you realize that some of the finest sportswriters in all of New York City used Gehrig’s love of picked eels as a trope.

I unfortunately don’t have access to all of the newspapers that were printed in New York City in 1927. I’m still waiting in particular for newspapers.com to give me access to the important New York Evening Journal, which featured the incredible writing of Ford Frick: more on him later.

Thankfully, however, G. H. Fleming put together a book years ago that collected a bunch of these articles together. It’s called Murderer’s Row, and, in my opinion, it remains the best book on the 1927 New York Yankees ever written.

Gehrig was in a little bit of a slump during a mid-July road trip, causing Frick to write this on July 14:

Page 267

Frick then played on the theme again when Gehrig woke up on July 18:

Page 272; the italicized comments are from Fleming.

Frick continued to play on this theme throughout the 1927 season, and presumably, kept it up afterwards as well.

This is something we’re missing in modern sports journalism. We’ve become so accustomed to worrying about statistical exactness and precision that we’ve lost a lot of the charm and fun that comes with the sport itself. The players now seem more like machines than humans.

I’m going to keep calling attention to these articles and this older technique as we come across it. Ford Frick, who eventually became Commissioner, was an absolute master of this style of writing.

We’re really missing out. Our age of in-your-face shouting in sports commentary pales in comparison with what once existed.

Of course, we can make a difference — one article at a time. Thank God for Substack.