percentage in his final year. Gehringer enlisted in the U.S. Navy after the 1942 season. He served three years, and was released in 1945. Gehringer considered making a comeback at age 41. "I came out of the service in such good shape that I felt I could've played a few years." Instead, Gehringer went into business selling fabrics to automobile manufacturers. In 1949, Gehringer was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers. Gehringer received 159 votes on 187 ballots (85.03%). Family Gehringer's father died in 1924. Though he only played five games as a Tiger in his rookie season of 1924, Gehringer moved his diabetic mother from the family farm outside Fowlerville, Michigan, to Detroit that year so there would be someone to look after her. Gehringer noted that his mother was a "great fan" who would either come out to the ballpark to watch him play or listen to Harry Heilmann's radio broadcasts on the porch. Gehringer married Josephine Stillen in 1949, after his mother's death. Then 46, Gehringer speculated that he might have married earlier "but I couldn't see bringing a wife into that kind of situation." He skipped his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame on June 13, 1949, because he did not want it to interfere with his wedding five days later. The couple remained married until Gehringer's death more than four decades later. Retired Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz was a cousin of Gehringer. Smoltz stated "My grandmother was a Gehringer" during the Detroit Tigers vs. New York Yankees game broadcast on June 11, 2016, and added "I got a chance to play golf with him, when I think he was 81 years old, and he might have shot his age!" Life after baseball In 1950, Tigers owner Walter Briggs asked Gehringer to be the team's general manager, and he agreed to do so. Gehringer later described the job as a "nightmare." As he put it: "We had a lousy ball club, and I'd been away from baseball at that time for ten years. I didn't know who was and who wasn't." After serving as the Tigers general manager from 1951 to 1953, Gehringer was given the title of Tigers vice president in the mid-1950s. He went back to his business selling fabric to the automobile companies, continuing with the company until 1974 when he sold his interest in