This season marks the 80th anniversary of the retirement of Lou Gehrig. My dad, who is seasonal age 98 this year, attended that game with his best friend and his younger brother. Both of them passed away in recent years. It struck me today that there is the possibility that my dad is the oldest person alive who attended the Gehrig ceremony.

I found an actuarial table based on the years 1939-1941, and using that made a rough estimate that at the time, an 18-year-old had a 1 in 1000 chance of living to be 98 years. The attendance that day was 61,808. The population that might be older than him today, age 98 through 108, should have made up about 16% of the fans that day, or around 10,000 people. If we generously apply the 1 in 1000 to that whole cohort, my dad would be in the top 10 of oldest surviving fans from that game. Since much of that cohort would be older, I suspect he’s more likely in the top five.

There are two things working against the 1939-1941 numbers being correct, one that hurts my father’s chances and one that helps them. The help is WWII, as that cohort of 18 to 28 year olds did most of the fighting in that time, and their death rate over the next few years likely ran much higher than expected. What works against my dad is that those who survived the war received much better medical care for the rest of their lives. There seem to be many more people living past 100 than ever before.

So I’ll stick with the estimate of dad sitting in the top five. If anyone knows a parent or grandparent or great grand parent who attended the game and is at least 98, please let me know.