Wally Pipp may be the only baseball game actor famous for seat the bench . As the legend goes , Pipp was the New York Yankees ’ longtime first baseman when , on June 2 , 1925 , he cry in sick with a cephalalgia . Yanks managing director Miller Huggins reside Pipp , urge he drink down an St. Joseph , and pencil in fresh talent . That “ fresh talent ” was a little known batsman call Lou Gehrig . The Iron Horse tore it up and did n’t bequeath the card for another 14 years . Meanwhile , Pipp lost his job and his pinstripes .
Now Pipp ’s name is a running joke . He ’s a beloved prophylactic tale : If you ’re hurt and do n’t blow it up , someone else will do your job — and they may do it better .
It ’s a neat story . Too risky it is n’t all true .
Pipp the Myth
It ’s truthful that Gehrig take Pipp ’s task . It ’s not honest , though , that the veteran lose it because of an achy skull . ( “ Please do n’t believe that aspirin story , ” Pipp once said . “ It just is n’t true . ” ) If anything , Pipp lost his job because the Yankees were playing terrible . The Bombers were 15 - 26 and had lost five heterosexual . By June 2 , Huggins had see enough . He benched six starters — include a slumping Pipp — and present the squad ’s nipper a snapshot .
The Yankees won . Gehrig went 3 for 5 .
It was the rootage of Pipp ’s end . Gehrig hang glide , and Pipp pass June as a benchwarmer . In July , Pipp was knocked into the infirmary after getting beaned in the dome with a batting practice heater . The stroke nearly killed him , and it secured Gehrig ’s spot as the new starter . At season ’s conclusion , the front office traded Pipp to the Reds .
So Pipp ’s parable is n’t exactly what your Little League carriage lead you to believe . It ’s not a tale of “ suck in - it - up - and - do - your - job . ” It ’s a less quixotic mixing of your dad ’s brazen advice of “ do n’t wet-nurse out there , youngster ” and your mom ’s over - protective advice of “ do n’t bury your helmet ! ”
Pipp the Man
Still , most devotee know Wally Pipp the parable , not Wally Pipp the soul . Do n’t let the Gehrig story fool you — Pipp was no slouch . He drop three solid season with Cincinnati and closed his career with the International League ’s Newark Bears , haul in more dough than he ever made in the Major . turn up he had a knack for tough timing , Pipp then retired for good — in October 1929 .
Pipp play the stemma market for a few years and play with a writing calling , moonlight as Babe Ruth ’s ghostwriter and penning a finance Holy Writ calledBuying trashy and Selling Dear . According toSports Illustrated , “ He also broadcasted a pregame baseball show for the Detroit Tigers , wrote radio scripts , and dabbled in publication . ”
When World War II rolled around , Pipp worked in a Michigan industrial plant that made B-24 bombers . Afterward , he shore a sales spear with the Rockford Screw Products Corporation . Pipp go from play first for the Yankees to vending screws and bolts — and he loved it . arm with the giving of causerie and dateless baseball tarradiddle , Pipp spend the rest of his life selling wares to Detroit ’s auto hotshots . He passed off in 1965 .
