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Show ; Baseball s . Man of the Decade i Gehrig , t t vv ... j" ;. '. i ;-- r. '.. . - : 7 -i is" - " 1 m ' .' i i i aatewaSMasj- -mrss By DILLON GRAHAM NEW YORK. Jan. 16 Babe Ruth overshadowed him as the '30s came in. Joe DIMaggio outshined him as the '40s approached. But during dur-ing that 10-year stretch he was the "iron horse," durable, powerful, dependable. Lou Gehrig Is our choice as baseball's man of the decade. Through the stretch he was on of the American league's fanciest hitters and the key figure and captain of the New York Yankees, Yan-kees, perhaps the greatest team ever assembled. Lou was sport's most durable star. His only rivals were polo's Tommy Hitchcock and track's Glenn Cunningham. He was the last word In testability. In May paralysis forced him to end his consecutive game string at 2130 about 1000 more games than any other plsyer had competed In consecutively, con-secutively, a record that most likely never will be surpassed. For more then 14 years he played In every Yankee game, regular season sea-son and world series. Plenty ef Aces The '30s produced some great diamond aces Slugger Jimmy Foxx, home run blffer, twice American Amer-ican league batting champion, three times runs batted In leader. Joe Medwtck, one of the finest hitters hit-ters In National league annals. Dizzy Dean, the pop-off guy with the buggy whip arm who won more than 20 games a year for four straight seasons. Lefty Grove, who led the American league in earned run pitching average for nine years, won 108 games in four . seasons. 1 Carl Hubbell, 20-plus winner for five successive years, probably the National league's best of the '30s. DIMaggio, who came with a rush ' late In the stretch and may go i down as No. 1 among baseball's all time aces. Bob Feller, Mel Ott, ; Red Raffing. They were great. But, In. our ' book, Gehrig was the man. Three times in the decade he led I his league in runs bstted In and set a record at 184 In 1931. Once, In Ruth ruled golden decade; (Gehrig tops last one. 1934, he was batting champion. Three years ago he was voted the most valuable player. For 13 atraight years he scored 100 or more runs. Thirteen years he hit for 300 or more total bases. Thirteen seasons he batted In 100 or more runs. He hit four home runs in one game and blasted 23 homers with the bases loaded. These were all records. He played In seven world series, 34 games, with a batting average of .361, and held th record for runs batted In with 35. It would require re-quire a column of type to list his records. Ruth was th outstanding figure among the Yankees during most of Gehrig's years, although Lou, lacking the Babe's color, outplayed him some of those years. And when Ruth passed on Gehrig had only a year or so of glory before the great rookie DIMaggio ousted him as the top Yankee attraction, ' ,, |