Watch recently unearthed video of the first game in Lou Gehrig's iron man streak

Although nobody knew it at the time, June 1, 1925, was a big day in baseball history. It was on that day that a 22-year-old rookie named Lou Gehrig pinch-hit in the eighth inning of the Yankees' game against Washington. Gehrig started at first the next day and wouldn't miss another game until May 1939. His consecutive-game streak of 2,130 wouldn't be eclipsed for another 56 years.

That 1925 game also happened to be Babe Ruth's first of the season (he sat out for several weeks with an abdominal issue known as "the Bellyache Heard 'round the World"), and a Fox Movietone News camera crew was on hand to capture the occasion at Yankee Stadium.

The video resurfaced on Tuesday after Tom Shieber, senior curator of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, discovered it in an archive at the University of South Carolina. In it you can see the always-jovial and outgoing Ruth telling jokes at the top of the dugout while the more reserved Gehrig sits in the dugout laughing behind him:  

Read the whole story of how the footage was found at the New York Times.