Charlie Gehringer played 19 years in Major League Baseball, all of them at second base and all of them with the Detroit Tigers. He ranks among the greatest players to take the field in the 1930s, with an amazing consistency that earned him the nickname, The Mechanical Man.
Gehringer played for the Tigers from 1924 through 1942, becoming a starter in 1926. He put up amazing numbers, including a .320 career batting average, good enough to put him in the top 50 of all time.
He didn’t have the power of some of his contemporary stars such as Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx or Lou Gehrig. But his consistency at the plate and on the field is what fans and his fellow players remembered. You came to the ballpark expecting an excellent performance, day in and day out, from Charlie Gehringer.
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He also had a reputation for quietly going about his business. “Charlie says `hello’ on Opening Day, `goodbye’ on closing day, and in between hits .350,” Hall of Fame player-manager Mickey Cochrane said of The Mechanical Man.
Charlie Gehringer’s Early Life
Charles Leonard Gehringer was born May 11, 1903, in a farm outside of Fowlerville, Mich., about 55 miles northwest of Detroit. His parents were immigrants from Germany. He worked on the dairy farm with this family, milking cows in the morning. They also raised corn, oats, wheat and barley.
It was a humble, hardworking beginning for a man who became known for his humble demeanor and hardworking ways in Major League Baseball.
He played baseball from a young age, often with older players, working to get better. His mother disapproved of baseball when Gehringer was a kid, but eventually he played with local teams, learning the game. After high school, he left his hometown to attend school at the University of Michigan, where Tigers leftfielder Bobby Veach saw Gehringer play. He immediately brought him to Detroit to show off his skill to Tigers’ management.
Even Ty Cobb, the superstar player-manager for the Tigers, was impressed. He urged the team to sign Gehringer as a potential second baseman. The problem was, Gehringer had never played second base before. So, Cobb sent him to the minors.
Charlie Gehringer’s Minor League Career
Gehringer’s greatness became apparent almost immediately in the minors as he learned the second base position.
He spent 1924 with Class B London in the Michigan-Ontario League, He hit .292 in 112 games. In 1925, the Tigers promoted him to Toronto of the Double-A International League, where he hit .325 in 155 games. In both years, he got call ups by the Tigers and played a handful of games with the big club.
In 1926, the Tigers brought him up. Gehringer played in 123 games and hit .277 in 517 plate appearances. At the request of Cobb, who was in his last year as manager, Gehringer used Cobb’s bat, although he later said he would have preferred another.
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He also said he considered Cobb like a father to him. But that changed. In the book “Cobb Would’ve Caught It” by Richard Bak, Gehringer is quoted as saying: “He was super for the first couple years I was up. Golly, he was like a father to me…Then all of a sudden, he got upset with me about something. To this day I don’t know what it was. He would hardly speak to me. He wouldn’t even tell me what signs I was going to get from the coaches. Weird. But he kept playing me, so it didn’t really matter whether he talked to me or not.”
Charlie Gehringer’s Major League Career
The Tigers released Cobb after the 1926 season. Gehringer started 1927 as the utility infielder, but got his chance to start at second when Marty McManus took ill and new manager George Moriarty replaced him with Gehringer. He played the position, other than injuries, for the next 15 seasons. (McManus remained a big contributor to the Tigers, playing mostly at third).
Gehringer went on an amazing run. He hit .317 in 1927. Between 1927 and 1940, the Mechanical Man hit .300 in all but one year. And in that one year – 1932 – he hit .298.
He earned a spot on every All-Star team between 1933 and 1938. He played as part of the 1934 Tigers that won the American League pennant and the 1935 Tigers that beat the Chicago Cubs in the World Series – the first championship in Tigers history.
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Other highlights included:
- Named Most Valuable Player in 1937 when he hit .371
- Scoring 131 runs in 1929 and 135 in 1934
- Hitting a league-leading 60 doubles in 1936
- Playing every inning of his All-Star games and hitting .500
At the end of this career, Gehringer had scored 1,775 runs and hit 574 doubles and 146 triples. In all, he had 2,839 hits.
Along the way, he earned the nickname The Mechanical Man, apparently given him by Lefty Gomez, the legendary pitcher for the New York Yankees and Washington Senators. He also had a reputation for being quiet and never causing a commotion. Adding to his clean-cut image was the fact he lived with his mother, who now had nothing against him playing baseball – his entire playing career.
The baseball writers elected Gehringer to the Hall of Fame in 1949.
After his retirement in 1942, Gehringer enlisted in the U.S. Navy during World War II, getting released from service in 1945. He served as general manager for the Tigers from 1951 to 1953, but spent most of his after-baseball years running a business that sold fabric to car manufacturers. He got married at the age of 46, after his mother’s death. He did not attend his Hall of Fame induction because it came just a few days before his marriage.
Gehringer died Jan. 21, 1993, at the age of 1989, in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., about 50 miles from where he grew up.
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