Baseball Card of Week: 2001 Legends of NY #111 Lou Gehrig

2001 Legends of NY #111 Lou Gehrig

This week's card was a part of set released in November of 2001 by Upper Deck.  The Legends of New York set was made to help honor the brave people who is there in need for the ones from the 9/11 tragedy.  It was a 200 base set that features the great players and moments from the New York teams- New York Yankees, Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants and New York Mets.  Randomly inserted within the packs were memorabilia cards that features a piece of jersey or bat from these NY greats or autographed cards also.  Also randomly inserted is the United We Stand set that depicts the true heroes from New York-the policemen/women and firemen.

As for the Lou Gehrig card itself.  Obviously Lou Gehrig is one of the all time greats from a New York team, but if you look at the card, you will see the number 4 in the upper left hand corner. This is Gehrig's uniform number as each player in the set shows his uniform number, if applicable.  Why is this significant?  Today, January 22, in 1929, the New York Yankees announced that they would start putting numbers on the back of the uniforms, the first team to do so.  Originally the numbers were given to where the player was at in the batting order.  Lou Gehrig batted 4th and Babe Ruth 3rd.