The Short Life of a Legend

Lou Gehrig, the son of poor German immigrants living in Upper Manhattan, New York City, the only one of four children to survive infancy, became one of the greatest baseball players to ever live. Known to be a “mama’s boy” growing up, he did everything he could to fulfill her dreams for him.
She wanted him to consider engineering as a career, so Lou went to Columbia University to study. While at Columbia University he also played baseball. During his freshman year the Yankees offered him a contract and he took it; going against his mother’s wishes for the first time. He spent a couple of years in the Minors before making it to the Yankees squad in 1925. During his first game with the team he pinch hit. The next day he started at first base for the other first baseman, Wally Pipp, who had a headache. From that day on, Lou Gehrig played in 2,130 consecutive baseball games over a fifteen year period. Because of this incredible feat he acquired the nickname, “The Iron Horse.”
However, in the spring of 1939, Gehrig would start feeling weak and sluggish and unable to perform at such a high standard as he did the previous fourteen years. On May 2, 1939, Gehrig removed himself from the lineup and went to the famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Before leaving the clinic, doctors told Gehrig that he had an incurable form of paralysis named Amyotrophic Lateral Syndrome (ALS); now known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
On July 4, 1939, less than a month after he found out he was terminally ill, fans held a Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day at Yankee Stadium. On this day, knowing he was going to die, in front of over 60,000 fans, he delivered his “Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth” speech. On June 2, 1941, exactly sixteen years after his first game, Lou Gehrig passed away.

Nathan Blanton
Section 005