This week, the excerpt is from the chapter Strange Times. Gehrig is beginning to not feel like himself.
Yet Gehrig still wasn't playing like an All-Star, much less the finest first baseman of all time. In five chances at the plate that day against the minor league Kansas City Blues, he walked three times, flied out to center, and reached first on a slow roller to third. His hands were still sore. Over the course of the next week, when he did manage to get a hit, it was usually a soft single. Against bush-league competition that included the New Orleans Pelicans, the Dallas Steers, and Houston Buffaloes, he couldn't hit a home run. In a game against the Little Rock Travelers on April 9, he lobbed a soft double in the first inning but went without another hit the rest of the day. In the fifth inning, he swung so hard at a third strike that he spun around and landed, like a drunkard, on his rear end.
At last, on April 12, in a game with the Knoxville Smokies, Gehrig hit a homer over the fence in left center field. Te ball traveled 360 feet. Given the poor quality of competition (Knoxville allowed nineteen runs on eighteen hits, eleven walks, and two errors) and the fact that he struck out twice, Gehrig was probably somewhat less than elated. The next afternoon, against the Yankees' Binghamton farm team, he had a double and a triple.
In years past, whenever doubt or insecurity crept into his head, he had conquered it with the knowledge that his physical strength and God-given athleticism would pull him through. Now, a few months shy of his thirty-fifth birthday, Gehrig had overcome many of the inhibitions that had plagued him as a younger man. But for the first time he had reason to doubt the reliability of his body.
The season would open in five days.
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