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Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth
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Posted by: min0 lee
#1 Classic Moment: July 4, 1939
By T.J. QUINN
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
When the Daily News asked its distinguished panel to pick the defining moment of the Yankees' first 100 years, the runaway winner was one that transcended baseball.
Any Yankee fan can recreate the scene, can intone the same New York accent and the echo in the stadium - "Yet today (today), I consider myself (myself)..."
It is the heartbreaking moment that made the Yankees grander than Ruth's bat, larger than the largest stadium in the game, classier than pinstripes. Lou Gehrig's farewell speech on July 4, 1939, is still, 64 years later, the high mark of grace under pressure for all of sport.
But at the time, almost no one knew what the moment meant.
The day was emotional and draining, but a key element that retroactively gilded the day was missing: Few knew that Gehrig was dying.
"I don't think the people knew how badly he was afflicted," remembered former Yankee great Tommy Henrich, one of the few players still living who were at the Stadium that day. "They didn't know he was going to die from it."
Gehrig's speech was a snapshot that would not take focus for two years, after he died from the disease that took his name.
"That all came later," Henrich said.
The full impact of the moment, and its poignancy, came when fans could watch the black and white film or listen to a recording and know that the words were spoken by a man who knew he was dying.
Henrich knew. A few of Gehrig's close friends did, too, but most people had no idea what amyotrophic lateral sclerosis was. Most newspaper accounts said he was suffering from "a form of infantile paralysis."
To this day Henrich, the 90-year-old man known as "Ol' Reliable," says he cannot think of that day without choking up.
"I've got goosebumps now," he said. "Oh, jiminy."
Two months earlier, Gehrig walked to home plate in Detroit with the lineup card, the first one in 2,130 games that did not have his name on it. His streak was over, Babe Dahlgren was at first base, and the Iron Horse knew the disease had ended his career at the age of 36. The Yankees would retire his No. 4, given to mark his place as the fourth hitter in the lineup. No number had ever been retired in baseball before that.
No marketing expert planned Gehrig's farewell. No agent wrote the speech and no beer company sponsored the event. Gehrig didn't even want to speak.
"I'd have rather struck out in the ninth with the score tied, two down and the bases loaded than walk out there before all those grand people. It's the only time I've been frightened on a ball field," he told reporters after the game.
The idea for the ceremony came from a sportswriter who suggested that the team have a Lou Gehrig appreciation day, and the team decided to have a 10-minute tribute between games of a Fourth of July doubleheader against the Washington Senators (scheduled doubleheaders, of course, have gone the way of the Senators).
As Gehrig watched, a small parade of veterans from the 1927 Yankees, one of the greatest in history and then the best ever, followed a band around Yankee Stadium. They raised a Series pennant from '27 in center field, then returned to home plate, where a microphone was standing.
Wally Pipp, the man Gehrig replaced at first base, was there. So were Waite Hoyt, Mark Koenig, Tony Lazzeri, Bob Meusel and Babe Ruth. Ruth and Gehrig, the greatest hitting tandem in history, had not spoken in more than four years.
The Yankees gave Gehrig a silver trophy with a poem inscribed on one side. The Giants, the Yankees' mortal enemy, sent him a plaque. That blew Gehrig away.
When it was time for Gehrig to speak, he sputtered. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his eyes, pinching his brow as he stared at his feet. Manager Joe McCarthy stepped next to him and whispered in his ear while the Yankees' legendary PR man, Sid Mercer, told the silent crowd of 61,808 that Gehrig was too choked up and had asked him to thank them all.
At McCarthy's urging, Gehrig came forward, standing silently as he collected himself. "Fans," he started, "fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break." His voice broke - it sounded like he said a "bad brag."
What he said next was perfectly clear.
"Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth."
He thanked his teammates, his roommate and best friend, Bill Dickey, the Giants, Col. Jacob Ruppert, Ed Barrow, Miller Huggins, McCarthy, his wife, Eleanor, and his mother-in-law. "So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break," he said, "but I've got an awful lot to live for. Thank you."
Ruth came to Gehrig and threw an arm around him, whispering in his ear and ending their feud.
After he left the field, Gehrig turned to a friend and asked whether he had rambled.
For those who were not at the Stadium, there was no sense that this was a man's eulogy for himself. Some newspaper accounts wrote of how upbeat the event was. Almost all got the big quote wrong - there were no tape recorders to double check their notes. Even Gary Cooper got it wrong in the movie "Pride of the Yankees," in a screenplay written by the Daily News' Paul Gallico. They rewrote the speech.
But the moment was not entirely lost on those who were there. Wrote the legendary Shirley Povich of the Washington Post, "I saw strong men weep this afternoon, expressionless umpires swallow hard and emotion pump the hearts and glaze the eyes of 60,000 baseball fans in Yankee Stadium. Yes, and hard-boiled news photographers clicked their shutters with fingers that trembled a bit."
For those few who knew that Gehrig was dying, the moment was almost too much to bear. The luckiest man on the face of the Earth.
"I don't know whether he had tears in his eyes or not. I know I did," Henrich said. "He did a beautiful job. The famous line, the famous line he used - oh, boy." And 64 years later, Henrich had to pause.
Even the last time Henrich saw Gehrig, his hero tried to find a bright spot. Shortly before Gehrig died in 1941, Henrich, Dickey and a handful of players went to Gehrig's home in Riverdale. The man who had been described by sportswriter Jim Murray as "Gibraltar in cleats" had shriveled to 125 pounds.
"He said, 'Well boys, thanks for coming out. The doctor told me that I have to go down to rock bottom and then my body's going to take over and I'm coming back,'" Henrich said. "We left and we looked at each other and said, 'Yeah, sure he's coming back.' He didn't fool anyone. But Lou just had to believe."
Gehrig's speech
'Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the 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 might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.'
Not on speaking terms
Who knows how many times they passed each other as one walked to the plate and the other to the dugout. But for more than four years Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, the two greatest hitters in baseball, barely spoke a word to each other.
The details of the feud are fuzzy, but it began in 1935 when the two players and their families were traveling to Japan for an All-Star tour. Some accounts say it started when Ruth made a crack about Gehrig's legendary closeness to his mother (she frequently cooked for him long after he was married). But the most reliable accounts say it boiled over during the Japan trip when Gehrig's wife, Eleanor, made an unfavorable comment about the way Ruth's wife, Claire, dressed her children. It finally ended on the day Gehrig announced his retirement.
Posted by: min0 lee
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