Before hitting the disabled list with a strained oblique, Joe Mauer and the rest of Major League Baseball’s starting first basemen honored Yankees legend Lou Gehrig by reciting Gehrig’s famous farewell speech.
MLB.com has the video. It will give you chills.
The Fourth of July marks the 75th anniversary of the day Gehrig famously referred to himself as the “luckiest man on the face of this earth.”
He made the speech in 1939 at Yankee Stadium. Less than two years later the degenerative effects of a nerve disorder, better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease or ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), took his life.
According to ESPN, managers and players across MLB will wear a commemorative patch on their uniforms July 4. MLB will donate $300,000 to organizations dedicating to fighting the disease that took Gehrig at the young age of 37.
The first 10,000 fans to attend Friday’s Twins-Yankees game at Target Field will receive a Lou Gehrig bobblehead doll.
THE SPEECH – LOUGEHRIG.COM
“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 seventeen 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 might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for.”
— Lou Gehrig
