New York Baseball

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Yankees Fan Selling Gehrig Items to Pay His Red Sox-Loving Grandkids’ College Costs
By Corey Kilgannon
Feb. 22, 2019

WOODBRIDGE, Conn. — Among the family and wedding photos in Bob and Jill Ellis’s living room are black-and-white shots of Lou Gehrig, the Yankees’ legendary first baseman who died in 1941 at age 37.

No, Gehrig was not a member of the family, said Mr. Ellis, 76, “but there’s always been something of a family connection.”

Elsewhere in the house, in Woodbridge, Conn., just outside New Haven, there is a photo in the bathroom of Gehrig clowning with his Yankees teammate Babe Ruth and a painting in the dining room that Gehrig was given during a 1931 trip to Japan.

These, and many other of Gehrig’s personal items, have been in the family since Gehrig’s mother died in 1954 and willed them to Ms. Ellis’s parents, who were her friends and neighbors in Westchester County and Connecticut in the 1940s and 1950s, said Mr. Ellis, a retired IBM manager.

Now the items are part of an online auction being held by Heritage Auctions, with bidding lasting through this weekend.

The Gehrig mementos include one of his game caps and baseballs autographed by the likes of Hall of Famers Ruth and Ty Cobb, as well as many personal documents and dozens of original photos, including the earliest known shots of Gehrig as a child.

“This is part of Lou Gehrig’s history and it’s been sitting for decades in attics and closets,” Mr. Ellis said. “A lot of the stuff is personal and really tells his story.”

The online auction provides a rare opportunity for the general public to see some of these items.

“It gives you that extra glimpse into the personal life of Gehrig and his family that you wouldn’t have been able to see otherwise,” said Rob Rosen, vice president of sports collectibles at Heritage Auctions.

Previous viewings were limited to a handful of people in the area when Mr. Ellis would occasionally pull the items out of an old 500-pound safe in his basement and show them at the local Kiwanis Club or a school, or when he invited a few older fans to his house for a drink.

He always offered the baseball hat for a try-on and photo opportunity, he said, because, “That was such a one-of-a-kind cap, and this was a way that they could sort of touch Lou Gehrig.”

The hat still has its shape, along with Gehrig’s name stitched into its leather brim. Auction officials are predicting it could bring upward of $200,000.

The entire collection could yield more than $400,000, Mr. Rosen said.

Gehrig items have drawn large sums in the past, including a jersey he wore that sold for $870,000 at auction, and his rookie contract with the Yankees in 1924, which sold for $480,000, Mr. Rosen said.

Mr. Ellis lives midway between Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park, in Boston, near the theoretical border that divides Red Sox Nation from rivals in Yankees territory, where geographic baseball loyalties are mixed.

Mr. Ellis is a Yankees fan, but his son and daughter root for the Red Sox.

“If they had been die-hard Yankee fans, I’d have more reason to keep the collection,” he said. Instead, despite their Red Sox loyalty, he will give money from the auction to his grandchildren who are heading off to college.

And so these Red Sox fans will benefit from proceeds received from selling an old Christmas card Ruth sent Gehrig, in which Ruth uses bats to spell out “Merry Christmas” on the field as Santa looks from the edge of the Yankees dugout.

The college fund will also be enriched by a signed registration slip for the 1926 Peerless coupe Gehrig bought shortly after joining the Yankees.

The collection also includes a 1933 letter from Gehrig to National City Bank of New Rochelle, listing his financial holdings and itemizing the stocks he was amassing while compiling his career home run total of 493 and his .340 lifetime batting average over 17 years with the Yankees.

Playing in 2,130 consecutive games helped earn Gehrig the nickname the Iron Horse. Gehrig retired in 1939 and, stricken with a terminal disease, he stood before fans at Yankee Stadium on July 4 of that year during an appreciation day and declared himself the “luckiest man on the face of the earth.” It is one of the more poignant moments in baseball history and was immortalized in the 1942 film “The Pride of the Yankees” with Gary Cooper.

Two years later, Gehrig died, from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neuromuscular disorder that came to be known as “Lou Gehrig’s disease.”

Gehrig grew up poor in Upper Manhattan and lived and played in New York nearly his entire life.

“He was a New Yorker through and through, from his accent to his public schooling,” said Jonathan Eig, who wrote the 2005 Gehrig biography “Luckiest Man.” “Between the time he spent in New York, and his talent, he may be the greatest New York athlete of all time.”

Since Gehrig was a relatively private man who died young, left few survivors and never wrote a memoir, any additional artifacts are considered valuable contributions to his legacy, Mr. Eig said.

Gehrig played baseball for Columbia University when games were played on campus between the stately buildings in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in Manhattan in the early 1920s.

He joined the Yankees in 1923, the same year the first Yankee Stadium opened. He and Ruth became the home run-hitting heroes of New York. He bought a house in New Rochelle, just north of New York City, for himself and his working-class German-born parents, Heinrich and Christina Gehrig.

A small pendant in the Ellises’ collection attests to Gehrig’s membership in the New Rochelle Elks Lodge. When he married in 1933, he and his wife, Eleanor, bought a house nearby at 9 Meadow Lane, a Queen Anne-style home with four bedrooms.

The house has changed little over the years and is currently up for sale, for $589,000.

One problem is that the open houses often draw more Gehrig fans than serious buyers, said Glorianne Mattesi, a real estate agent who is showing the house.

“For some people, it’s a bonus that it was his house,” she said. “For others, the draw is just the charm of a vintage home with high ceilings and a lot of space.”

A well-known aspect of Gehrig’s personal life was that he was a mama’s boy, and that his overprotective mother never took to Eleanor.

Among the items that Mr. Ellis did not put up for sale are Christina Gehrig’s birth certificate and her will, as well as legal briefs in the lawsuits between her and Eleanor over Lou Gehrig’s life insurance policy after his death.

As for the trove that he is selling off, he said: “It all helps tell Lou Gehrig’s story and I’m glad the public is getting to see it.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/nyregion/lou-gehrig-auction-sale.html