Walter Clement "Wally" Pipp (February 17, 1893 - January 11, 1965), was a baseball player of moderate ability, now best remembered as the man who lost his starting role to Lou Gehrig at the beginning of Gehrig's streak of 2,130 consecutive games.

After playing 12 games with the Detroit Tigers in 1913, Pipp joined the New York Yankees for the 1915, and would play 136 or more games for them every season until 1925 (except 1918 which was curtailed by injury), hitting 282, with little power, even after the end of the dead ball era. Pipp did lead the American league in home runs in 1916, with 12, and again in 1917, with 9.

On June 2, 1925 he was scratched from the Yankees starting lineup and replaced with Gehrig. While many stories over the years have suggested that Pipp sat out the game due to a headache, the real story is that Yankees manager Miller Huggins benched Pipp along with other veterans to "shakeup" the slumping lineup. A month later he received a skull fracture when he was beaned with a practice pitch from Charlie Caldwell , an event which has also mistakenly been linked to his initial benching. He did not play again for the Yankees and was traded to the Cincinnati Reds before the 1926 season, for whom he played 372 games over the next three seasons before retiring.

Career Statistics

G	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	R	RBI	BB	SO	SH	HBP	AVG	OBP	SLG
1,872	6,914	1,941	311	148	90	974	997	596	551	272	38	.281	.341	.408

External Link

Urban legend about Wally Pipp's headache http://www.snopes.com/sports/baseball/pipp.asp (from Snopes.com)