Sport: In Memoriam

In every ball park, flags drooped at half-mast. In New York's Polo Grounds, Brooklyn's Ebbets Field and Detroit's Briggs Stadium—where New York ball clubs were playing—tier upon tier the fans stood bareheaded for a minute of silent tribute. In baseball's Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, N.Y., mourners filed past a black-draped plaque. For the baseball world last week mourned 37-year-old Lou Gehrig, onetime Yankee first baseman, who Lad succumbed after two years to a rare, incurable disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

U.S. sportswriters, the most sentimental members of a notoriously softhearted craft, have blubbered over many a death before. Fortnight ago they had even wept a bit for Max Schmeling, till he turned out to be alive. But last week's outburst was an emotional flood the likes of which few oldtimers could remember. Only attempt to keep his feet in the pool of tears was made by onetime Sportswriter Westbrook ("Old Nasty") Pegler. Wrote he in the New York World-Telegram:

"Lou Gehrig, when he came to die, was given miles of white paper covered with the tenderest tributes for his obituary, principally because he was a decent man. ... Is character then so rare that a good man merits such tributes merely because he has been good? Well, what would you say? . . .

"The Lou Gehrigs should not be rare. They should be the standard human type, for, after all, Lou was a simple soul, with no affectations, who didn't have to work at being good and kind. He didn't even have a formula but just lived by ear, so to speak. . . . And here I am. too, still fumbling in an attempt to find words with which to appreciate a man and a player, and coming to the end of the piece with nothing better to offer than something about character. That was what it was that made Gehrig great above and beyond his size and achievements, and it is no credit to the breed that so many of us are so unlike this fine man that we must stand in such awe of his simple virtues.''