Month: September 2017

by Willard Mullin

Published in the New York World Telegram, May 1939.

You heard of the Wonderful Iron Horse Lou,
Who looked as if he would never be through,
For fourteen years as good as new,
And then of a sudden, he — ah, it’s true!
Gehrig was not like the common folk;
Created, was he, like the strongest oak;
Seemed nothing could crack on this hardy bloke!
No flaw to be found, no use to try
With hand as good and sure as his eye,
His arm was just as strong as his knee;
His back and shoulders enough for three;
And his legs the best you ever did see.
A thousand ballgames passed and found
Gehrig at first base strong and sound.
Fifteen hundred came and went;
Eighteen hundred and still unbent.
And then the two thousand twenty-first game
Playing as usual, much the same.
His body was sturdy — just like the start;
His lungs were still as strong as his heart,
He was sound all over as any part,
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt
In one more game he will be worn out.
The second of May, Thirty-Nine!
McCarthy was naming his men down the line —
And what do you think the people found?
Dahlgren on first to the right of the mound!
And off in the dugout with head going round
Was the man who had played himself into the ground.
You see, of course, if you’re not a dunce
How he went to pieces all at once —
All at once, and nothing first —
Just as bubbles do when they burst.
End of the wonderful Iron Horse Lou.
Flesh is flesh — and Lou is through.

Willard Mullin, a widely syndicated sports cartoonist, was the creator of the Brooklyn Bum, the clownish personification of the Dodgers’ team in the 1940s and ’50s.