Baseball was Lou Gehrig’s Disease?
Lou Gehrig, a heroic slugger for the Yankees baseball team, was famed for brushing aside repeated fractures and batting after nearly being knocked unconscious, before giving his name to the disease that was said to have killed him.
But a new study suggests that the player may not have died of Lou Gehrig’s disease, formerly known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a type of motor neurone disease. Instead, it may have been the baseballs bouncing off his head that claimed his life in 1941.
According to a paper to be published tomorrow in a leading journal, Gehrig and a string of American football players and soldiers recorded as dying of ALS, may instead have died due to brain traumas.
Research at the Veterans Affairs Medical Centre in Massachusetts and Boston University’s medical school have identified markings in the spinal cords of two American football players and a boxer who were said to have died of ALS that suggest they died as the result of a disease caused by concussion or other head trauma that attacks the central nervous system.
The finding, published in the Journal of Neuropathology & Experimental Neurology, now means doctors may have to reassess how to treat athletes suffering lasting effects from concussion, and particularly the rising numbers of American soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with brain injuries caused by roadside bombs.
Gehrig, who built a heroic reputation for playing on despite injuries – he played 2,130 games over 14 years – is not named in the study. But Dr Ann McKee, the director of the neuropathology laboratory for the New England Veterans Administration Medical Centers, and the lead neuropathologist on the study, said that the implication is that he may well have died not from the disease named after him but from the repeated concussions he received on the baseball field as well as when he played American football in school and at university.
Isn’t this something that could be determined by exhumation? I say dig him up; dig him up now!
…apparently Gehrig was cremated. Nevertheless, there must be some Yankee first baseman worth digging up. Joe Collins? Don Mattingly?
If you actually read the entire NY Times article on the issue, you’d know that it’s not that simple. Gehrig was cremated.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/sports/18gehrig.html?ref=sports
Reading the entire article is so passe.
I assume Farley is being facetious here, but still – Gehrig died in 1941, for heaven’s sake. Even if he had been buried, what could possibly be left to examine? His brain would have long since become worm food. Sure, you can still detect stuff like poisons in very old bodies, but examining delicate brain structures? Surely there’s nothing left to examine.
What I do know is that the disease is NOT formerly known as ALS. It IS known as ALS, formerly (and commonly) known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Terrible editing there.
Gehrig did not suffer repeated minor and major concussions like football players do, several times a game. A foul tip to the mask is rare, and I’m guessing that it does not create the same force that football players take running into each other head first. Of course, the masks in the 1920s an 1930s did not have the same padding either, so I may be full of shit. Athletes do seem to get ALS more frequently than the general population, though.
Gehrig played first base–catchers wear masks–so why are you talking about masks?
Ouch. Man, am I out to lunch. Well I did say I might be full of shit. I blame it on age and drink. I guess I was think abut getting hit in the head. No excuse, I know. I need to change my name.
Of course, this actually reinforces your argument: first baseman sustain very few blows to the head.
Given that Gehrig wasn’t actually named in the study and the quote given to the reporter by the author (“may well have been”) this sounds like another case where the popular press misreports science.
Wasn’t Gehrig also a football standout at Columbia? Might have had a few blows to the melon there as well.
Okay, I see I should have read on.
Again, read the NY Times article I linked to above. Gehrig was hit square in the head several by pitches while he was at bat, during an era when helmets were not used. He also played football in high school and college, which could have led to additional (undocumented) head injuries. This, combined with the fact that he was working on his “perfect” record of not missing games means he never took off time to recover from at least several serious concussions.
Gehrig played one season of football at Columbia. He was banned his freshman year for playing minor league baseball under an assumed name, played his sophomore season at right half bacl and signed with the Yankees prior to his junior year
Lou was hit by 45 pitches in his 17-year MLB career. I would guess fewer than 10-20% of those were in the head. He was also hit in the head at least once by a throw. Lou was probably hit in the head about once every other year on average — but with no more padding than a baseball hat.
The big issue seems to be the lack of a day off. As the Jason Bay situation shows, even really mild concussions are greatly exacerbated by continued activity. Even a couple days off after a mild concussion can make a big difference.
Incidentally, it’s amazing to me that it’s taken this long for (sports?) medicine to catch up on concussions. It seems like the conventional wisdom of even 5 or 8 years ago is now hopelessly primitive. I suppose a lot of it is advances in MRIs, which provide crucial snapshots between healthy young brains and horrifying older (but not that old) brains, but it’s still really striking. The article about Bay in the Times yesterday indicated that, while the Mets’ medical staff did nothing against SOP (for once), half the teams in baseball have already changed their SOP to deal with “whiplash” concussions.
Nevertheless, there must be some Yankee first baseman worth digging up. Joe Collins? Don Mattingly?
We could start by burying current players after whomping them severally about the head and shoulders.
jes sayin, is all.
Sooner or later, I expect the word to come out that A.D.D. is the result of insult to the brain during a particular stage in development. It could be a toxin or a blow to the head or a psychological trauma. I KNOW what has been diagnosed as A.D.H.D. in me is a head injury I had when I was seven. You don’t just swim like a fish—alone and unafraid from the age of four—and then suddenly start drowning, unable to swim a single lap without having an absence seizure, coming to underwater disoriented without enough activity in your frontal lobe to even describe to yourself verbally what is happening to you. I’m nearly a textbook case of A.D.D., and it all started after that head injury. All parents and medical professionals, at that time, were satisfied if you did not turn into a drooling vegetable or lapse into a coma.
We’re getting much better at protecting our brains, and I am looking forward to better monitoring of brain injuries and insults leading to better diagnoses of neurological dysfunction. Maybe we can learn how to prevent a lot of the stuff of the diagnostic manual. Sad as the cause of all this brain research is, it’s valuable research.
Stephen Hawking is another person too famous for having Motor Neurone Disease (as those of us outside the USAsphere know it) to aknowledge the fact that he doesn’t have it (he has a thing called spinocerebellar degeneration). Neurology still largely follows the 19th Century practice of labling strange phenomena with complex tags to divert the unwashed fromm the lack of understanding of the how and why. Slainte.
Larger, later sample. Maybe these 49ers didn’t have ALS either.
http://www.steroidtimes.com/steroids-were-doctors-rx-for-football-in-the-60s/2009
Dig up Nick Johnson!
I’m not dead yet!
You’re not fooling anyone, you know…
I saw Jason Giambi in a Colorado Rockies uniform the other day. I’m not sure if he’s a coach or a player but I’m sure doing some tissue studies on him would be interesting. You could find Jack Daniels, tattoo ink, HGH, frozen custard, you name it.
Also, Don Mattingly was GREAT. As good as Kirby Puckett and every bit the gamer. One of the very best players of the 80s.
Is there a Ted Williams disease? (“Weird-family disease” doesn’t count — too generic and besides, no shortage of research subjects.) One day researchers may be able to interview him about it. (Sorry for the snark — I admire Ted Williams enormously, but I’m a die-hard Yankees fan and can’t let tedious Red Sox snark go unanswered.)
Hey, I’ll admit the former Brooklyn Bums Of Los Angeles aren’t doing too well this season, but Mattingly isn’t completely buried under the McCourts.
[...] Baseball was Lou Gehrig’s Disease? : Lawyers, Guns & Money [...]