"Erudite baseball fans know Wally Pipp as the possessor of the most famous headache in baseball history. In his own words, 'the most expensive aspirins in history.' On June 2, 1925, Pipp told Yankee manager Miller Huggins he needed to sit that day out...
...Rookie Lou Gehrig took his place, Pipp lost the job he had held since 1915 and at season's end was shunted off to Cincinnati. To most who have heard of him, Pipp is synonymous with 'the personification of dispensability,' the assumption being that he wasn't much of a player.
The pervasive feeling through the years has been that Lou replaced some journeyman, otherwise how could he come along and take his job. But that's part of the irony. Just as Bobby Thomson was replaced first by Willie Mays and then by Hank Aaron when he was traded to the Braves, Pipp was an excellent player. But Gehrig was Gehrig, just as Mays and Aaron were all-time greats.
A seldom remembered fact is that Robert Ripley, of Believe-it-or-Not fame, termed the slugging Yankees of the late teens 'Murderer's Row' before Ruth and Gehrig showed up. Lou was still in high school at the time! Pipp led the AL in homers twice before Ruth turned the game on its ear with 54 homers in 1920. More significant was that he twice drove in 100+ runs, four times drove in over 90, and had 996 RBIs for his career. Even after Ruth and Bob Meusel came along, he was still 2nd or 3rd in RBIs for the Yanks of the early 1920s. He held virtually all the Yankee first base records until Gehrig broke them. Wally was also a top notch fielder—he is still among the career leaders for chances per game and putouts at first base.
To the irony that Pipp played in more games than any Yankee between 1915 and 1924, add the following:
In 1922, Wally Pipp, picking up a little extra money scouting for the Indianapolis club, discovered Lou Gehrig playing at Columbia and strongly urged that he be signed."
