Seventy years ago between games of a doubleheader, the Yankees held Lou Gehrig Day, in honor of their great first baseman, who had set a record for consecutive games played that was ended by illness with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, more commonly known nowadays as Lou Gehrig's Disease. He had stopped playing the previous April due to the illness, and on 4 July 1939, he was presented with a whole bunch of gifts he was too weak to hold. His number (4) was retired, and Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia gave a speech that was lost on the dustbin of history because of the speech that came next from the guest of honor.

Here's the full text of the speech Gehrig gave that day:

Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for 17 years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I’m lucky.

When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift – that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies – that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter – that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body – it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed – that’s the finest I know.

So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for.

Thanks to the noble Pete Abraham for the transcript.

For today's game against the Blue Jays, the Yankees are wearing "4ALS" patches, and the number 4 will be on first base, where Gehrig played for 2,130 consecutive Yankee games.

Oh, and much as I despise the new Yankee Stadium and find it to be an abomination, I will give them this: inside Gate 4 is a tribute to Gehrig, including the above-quoted speech on a loop.

*raises glass to a great ballplayer*

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day