Following a tradition that began with a limited edition Big Crown Pointer Date made in tribute to Roberto Clemente, and later continued with a similar watch honoring Hank Aaron, Oris has just unveiled a new baseball themed watch in honor of New York Yankees legend Lou Gehrig.
Lou Gehrig’s legacy is bigger than baseball. His address to a Yankee Stadium crowd upon his retirement from the game is one of the most famous moments in the history of the sport, and often referred to as “baseball’s Gettysburg address.” When Gehrig retired from baseball in 1939, he ended what at the time (and for decades) was thought to be an unbreakable record of consecutive games: 2,130 in a row over a 15 season span. Nicknamed the Iron Horse for his durability throughout his playing career, his retirement due to complications from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is all the more poignant. Gehrig passed away at the age of 37, just two years after retirement, and in the years since the Yankees and Major League Baseball have raised millions of dollars for ALS research.
Like the Clemente and Aaron watches before it, the Lou Gehrig Limited Edition is a tasteful tribute that can be appreciated well outside the sphere of baseball fandom. The watch has a number of details that fans will recognize as tributes to Gehrig’s life and career, but they are pretty subtle in their execution. The “4” in the date ring on the dial’s perimeter is highlighted in blue, which honors Gehrig’s jersey number, and the watch is unmistakably rendered in Yankee colors, but Oris has smartly avoided pinstripes or the Yankee logo. Another small difference between this Pointer Date and others in the collection is that hour markers are a mix of Arabic numerals and lumed indices, which is meant to evoke the watches that were in style during Gehrig’s playing days. The caseback features an engraving of Gehrig giving his farewell speech, as well as the limited edition number.
In terms of specs, what we have here is a pretty standard Pointer Date, with a 40mm case in stainless steel that measures 12.2mm thick and 48.2mm from lug to lug. It runs on the Oris Calibre 754, which is a rebadged Sellita movement with the complication that gives the watch its name executed with a long central hand pointing to the current date at the dial’s perimeter. The case is water resistant to 50 meters, and it comes paired with both a brown leather strap (with stitching menat to mimic that of a baseball glove) and a white and grey fabric strap.
The Lou Gehrig Limited Edition is a limited edition of 2,130 numbered pieces. The packaging includes a special edition of the Oris presentation box, as well as a newly commissioned custom baseball card featuring Gehrig.
The retail price of the Lou Gehrig Limited Edition is $2,850. Oris
