A set of unique, previously unknown Lou Gehrig items is set to go to auction, including a uniform he wore on the famous 1934 barnstorming tour of Japan and a number of baseballs with signatures from the Iron Horse and other legends.
The collectibles are all apparently gifts from Lou's legendarily protective mother to a women who may have once been Gehrig's girlfriend.
"What’s fascinating to me is this relationship," [Gehrig biographer Jonathan] Eig said. "Gehrig was so shy and inhibited he never had any interest in sharing his private life or telling his story. So I’d love to know more about this person able to charm him and charm his mother — and Christina Gehrig was not an easy woman to charm."...
As for [Ruth Quick's] relationship with Gehrig, there are tantalizing hints but no more. Eig’s book, for example, cites one account that Gehrig "had been seen at a movie theater with a red-cheeked German girl who wore a bunch of flowers in her hair." Ruth Quick was of German descent and could have fit that sketchy description, but we’ll probably never know if the flowers were apple blossoms, or if it was her. Similarly, it is hard not to wonder whether Ruth Quick was one of the potential mates Christina Gehrig vetoed, only to have the opposite of buyer’s remorse.
I wonder what other treasure are waiting, half forgotten, in someone's attic.