Using a Hall pass

Longtime Detroit Tigers second baseman Charlie Gehringer is elected 75 years ago today to the Hall of Fame, having been named on 159 of the 187 ballots cast by the Baseball Writers of Association of America.

The 46-year-old Gehringer, though, does not attend his own induction a month later in June 1949, having gone to California to take care of another, more pressing personal matter.

Like getting married.

Mr. and Mrs. Gehringer

Just like that, baseball’s famed “Mechanical Man” becomes its “Matrimonial Man.”

Seems wedding plans are made shortly after Gehringer’s ailing mother – for whom he cares up to that point – passes away in 1949 after a long bout with diabetes and before he learns of his election to the Hall.

“I might’ve married sooner than I did,” Gehringer says, “but I couldn’t see bringing a wife into that kind of situation.”

After the longtime bachelor becomes the first living inductee to skip his own induction, Gehringer and his wife, Josephine, attend nearly every Hall of Fame ceremony until his death in January 1993.