In 1928, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig became one of the first celebrities to endorse a political candidate on a national level. That year’s presidential election pitted Republican Herbert Hoover against Democrat Al Smith. Smith was the governor of New York and to boost his national image tapped the two greatest baseball stars in the land, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig to help his campaign outside New York. The Yankees duo went on the campaign trail, each sporting a copy of Al Smith’s trademark brown bowler hat. During one of their campaign stops in Ohio, Gehrig gifted this trademark hat to a local politician, inscribing the interior of the bowler with “To Pops Lunken, the Al Smith of Dayton, Ohio, Most Sincerely from ‘Lou’ Gehrig.” Despite the help from his famous Yankees friends, Smith couldn’t build upon his regional popularity nor shake his association with New York Tammany Hall corruption and was crushed in a landslide election that November.

This brown bowler-style hat has a size “7 1/8” label and “The Union Columbus, Ohio” manufacturers label in gold on the hatband as well as stamped on the silk liner adjacent to Gehrig’s inscription. The hat comes with a “10-23-28” dated photograph of both Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth in their Al Smith hats during a campaign stop in Columbus. This hat was once a part of the collection of another Yankees great, David Wells, and his signed LOA is included. This is certainly one of the more unique Gehrig items available and is an interesting part of both baseball and American political history. Both the hat and the photograph are in excellent condition with Gehrig’s interior inscription in good condition. The hat comes with an LOA from PSA/DNA (Q99485) for the signature and signed LOA from David Wells for the provenance to his collection.

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