It's been 75 years since the BBWAA held a special election to vote Lou Gehrig into the Hall of Fame

In 1939, Yankees slugger Lou Gehrig -- baseball's Iron Horse -- announced his retirement and revealed that he'd been diagnosed with ALS. Gehrig went just 4-for-28 that season, but finished his impressive career with 493 home runs, 534 doubles, 2,721 hits and 112.4 WAR. He won the AL MVP in 1927 and 1936 and helped the Bronx Bombers to six World Series championships in his 17-year career. (They won the World Series in 1939, too.)

At that year's Winter Meetings in Cincinnati, the Baseball Writers' Association of America held a special election to consider Gehrig for enshrinement at the Baseball Hall of Fame, which had opened in Cooperstown, N.Y., that June. The BBWAA had previously agreed not to hold another regular election until 1942, and would then only consider retired players (the five-year waiting period wasn't established until 1954). 

With the ALS diagnosis cutting Gehrig's career -- and, ultimately, his life -- so short, the BBWAA agreed to make an exception for Gehrig. On Dec. 7, 1939, it voted to elect Henry Louis Gehrig into the Baseball Hall of Fame.