Lou Gehrig Hit 23 Grand Slams and Played 2,130 Games in a Row

Lou Gehrig holds the career record for grand slams with 23, and played 2,130 consecutive games, a streak that stood for 56 years. He hit .340 with 493 home runs, and drove in 150 or more runs in seven different seasons.

Seven seasons of 150 runs batted in is the number to sit with, and it is the most any player has managed. He won the Triple Crown in 1934, took two MVP awards, and won six World Series with the Yankees, batting either behind Ruth or ahead of DiMaggio in the most feared lineup ever assembled.

The 23 grand slams are a small statistic that says something large. A grand slam requires the bases loaded, which means the moment when a pitcher least wants to make a mistake and is most likely to pitch around a hitter. Gehrig hit more of them than anyone, in an era of far fewer home runs overall, which is a durable answer to whether he produced when it counted.

The consecutive games streak was treated for decades as the unbreakable record, and it was: fourteen years without a day off, through broken fingers, back spasms and concussions, in a period with no disabled list to hide on. Cal Ripken finally passed it in 1995.

The ending is the reason the numbers understate him. Gehrig was suffering from ALS through his final seasons without knowing it, and what looked like a normal decline was a disease dismantling him. He took himself out of the lineup in May 1939, at 36, and never played again. The peak years he should have had do not appear in any record book.

Mike Schmidt is the consensus greatest third baseman, with three MVPs, ten Gold Gloves and the best combination of power and defense at a corner. Jimmie Foxx and Albert Pujols both have stronger cases at first base than they are usually given. Schmidt in particular has a serious claim on this slot.

Gehrig gets it on peak and on what was taken from him. Nobody else at a corner infield spot paired that level of production with that reliability, and his final line is an undercount rather than a summary.

The verdict: Gehrig at first base. Mike Schmidt at third.