On the Fourth of July at Yankee Stadium, the Iron Horse, who had been stricken with ALS, delivered his famous speech, calling himself ‘the luckiest man on the face of the Earth’
On July 4, 1939, Lou Gehrig retired from the New York Yankees and Major League Baseball after being stricken with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). He became the first player in MLB history to have his number retired, in a ceremony that afternoon at Yankee Stadium, where he would deliver an Independence Day speech that became iconic – for both its beauty and its tragedy.
“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.”
“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!”
“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, remembers you with trophies—that’s something.”
Gehrig continued by thanking his family for their support and strength, ultimately stating that despite his “bad break,” he still considered himself the “luckiest man on the face of the earth”
