“I think there is something wrong
with him. Physically wrong, I mean. I don't know what it is, but I am satisfied
that it goes far beyond his ball-playing. I have seen ballplayers 'go'
overnight, as Gehrig seems to have done. But they were simply washed up as
ballplayers. It's something deeper than that in this case, though. I have
watched him very closely and this is what I have seen: I have seen him time a
ball perfectly, swing on it as hard as he can, meet it squarely — and drive
a soft, looping fly over the infield. In other words, for some reason that I do
not know, his old power isn't there... He is meeting the ball, time after time,
and it isn't going anywhere." That is what a news reporter wrote about Lou Gehrig, one of the greatest American baseball players of all time, on watching
him playing baseball badly not knowing that he was seriously ill and did not
have long to live
When Lou knew that something was
wrong too he wrote to his wife Eleanor telling her what it was: “The bad news
is lateral sclerosis, in our language chronic infantile paralysis. There isn't
any cure... there are very few of these cases. It is probably caused by some
germ...Never heard of transmitting it to mates... There is a 50–50 chance of
keeping me as I am. I may need a cane in 10 or 15 years. Playing is out of the
question.’ He had two years to live.
Playing was indeed out of the
question and when he addressed for the last time his beloved fans on June the
fourth 1939 at a sold out game at Yankee Stadium he said this:
“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 the earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen
years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you
fans.
When you look around, wouldn't
you consider it a privilege to associate yourself with such fine looking men as
are standing in uniform in this ballpark today? 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 Burrow? 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 Mc Carthy? 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 that 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 might
have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.”
Lou Gehrig 1903-1941
Cobbled together by Barry Clifford
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