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Coakley's career as both a ballplayer and coach was outstanding in its own right, but to many, he will most famously
be known as "The Man Who Made Lou Gehrig." The Iron Horse (1903-1941) played but one season as a Columbia Lion before
the New York Yankees picked him up, but his impact on the team that year was significant, his feats legendary. And perhaps,
if not for Coakley, there might never have been a Gehrig at Columbia in the first place.
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It was the summer of 1921.
18-year-old Lou Gehrig would be beginning his freshman year at Columbia in the fall on a full athletic scholarship
for football. The strong, versatile athlete also excelled on the diamond -- some newspapers were already touting him "the
Babe Ruth of the High Schools" -- where he pitched and played first base and the outfield. But his physical prowess
had always meant little to his parents -- German immigrants in inner-city New York often looking for work and strapped
for cash -- and Gehrig, the only surviving child of four, had little intention of treating sports as anything more than
an occasional hobby. He was more concerned with helping to make ends meet within his family, getting his diploma, and
going onto professional school.
But in the summer of 1921 a scout from the New York Giants approached him with an attractive proposition: why not play
semipro ball over the summer and bring in a little extra money? Lots of college kids did it between academic terms,
the scout insisted, and if he changed his name no one would have to know. The possibility that he could get paid for
his skills appealed to the youth, and soon after, "Lou Lewis" began appearing regularly on the sports pages in Hartford --
where he played for the minor-league Senators.
Word quickly reached Coakley of what Gehrig had been doing, and he immediately traveled up to Hartford to recall the
young recruit. He explained to Gehrig the serious implications of him playing professionally on his future in collegiate
athletics; he could be declared ineligible indefinitely. Still, Coakley, who could somewhat identify with Gehrig's position,
having assumed a false name his first season in the major leagues himself in order to protect his amateur status, pleaded
on Gehrig's behalf to both the Columbia trustees and the school's opponents that season, as did Bobby Watt, then the Lions'
athletic director. The schools eventually arrived at a compromise: Gehrig would be suspended from his first year of collegiate
athletics competition.
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| Lou Gehrig while at Columbia in 1923 |
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| http://www.columbia.edu/cu/alumni/Magazine/ Fall2001/Gehrig.html |
Thus, Gehrig did not play a single game for the Lions until his sophomore year, reporting to Coakley's nine for
the first time in 1923. A quiet, unassuming character, Gehrig caught Coakley's eye with his amazing manifestation of all-around
raw talent. A powerful slugger, he could wallop the ball out of South Field farther than anyone ever had before. He also held
his ground as a pitcher, fanning at least ten batters in five of his 11 appearances on the mound that season, including the
record 17 he struck out in a losing effort against Williams College on April 18 -- still a Columbia record to this day. (Though
Paul Brosnan would tie it vs. Rhode Island in 1968.) And he could run.
"Could he leg it fast around those bases for a big man," Coakley said in the Spectator on
August 20, 1943, "Why he'd run 100 yards in less than eleven seconds. And another of his many assets was his sureness of hand,
which made him mighty valuable at first base."
But Gehrig was not always strong in the field, at first, and Coakley meticulously worked with him on his faults,
feeding him hundreds of slow ground balls to correct his poor timing and sluggish reflexes. By the time the season had
begun, that aspect of his play had improved considerably, and during Columbia's nineteen-game schedule, Gehrig hit seven home
runs and batted .444 -- then both also Columbia season records that have since been surpassed. He also rang up 28 hits
(in 63 at-bats) -- six of which were doubles and two of which were triples -- scored 24 runs, and slugged a mind-boggling
.937.
But it was the home runs that made Gehrig legendary, and stories still persist of his mighty clouts flying through various
windows on campus -- though Coakley maintained Gehrig shattered not one pane of glass all season. But such exaggerations of
the magnitude of Gehrig's home runs were in reality not that far off. One of Gehrig's longballs landed at the entrance
and rolled inside the Journalism building, at least 400 feet from South Field's home plate. Another soared over the sun dial
and landed on the Low Library steps, also a good 400 feet away from home plate -- to the opposite field.
| Gehrig hitting on Columbia's South Field, 1923 |
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| http://www.columbia.edu/cu/alumni/Magazine/Fall2001/Gehrig.html |
"Lou was a natural," Coakley told the Columbia Spectator on March 27, 1947, "The boy always
loved to play the ball. And could he hit. I remember his last game against NYU in 192[3]. Lou caught an inside
pitch and pushed it toward right field. Home plate was near the corner of South Field next to Butler Library. The ball traveled
on a line toward right, and finally bounced on the top steps of Low Library, barely missing Dean [Herbert] Hawkes by
inches. Immediately after that blow, Yankee scouts, who were among the spectators, signed Gehrig
to a major league contract."
Indeed, Paul Krichell, a scout with the New York Yankees, had attended that game, among others, and at the end of the
academic term, Gehrig withdrew from Columbia in favor of a career in professional baseball. Some have suggested that Coakley
was paid $500 -- a substantial amount of money in 1923 -- to encourage Gehrig to sign with the Yankees, but the rumor has
not been proven. What is known is that Gehrig did seek the advice of colleagues and professors on whether or not to leave
Columbia; one, in particular, business Professor Archibald Stockder, put it plainly: "Lou," he said, "you've been in my class
for almost a year... I think you better play ball."
Although Gehrig had little to do with Columbia after he signed with the Yankees, Coakley still considered him a favorite.
Even after the big firstbaseman rose to major league superstardom, Coakley would still refer to Gehrig as "my
boy."
Upon Gehrig's untimely death from the disease that now bears his name in 1941, Coakley told the Columbia Spectator
that it was "a real tragedy that such a thing had to happen to a good living boy like him, a fellow
who really took care of himself and was a credit to the sport."
Not surprisingly, Gehrig, who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939 (making Columbia the only college with
three of its alumni -- John Montgomery Ward and Eddie Collins being the other two -- enshrined in Cooperstown), was named
the first baseman on Coakley's all-time baseball team.
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