Sunday, July 05, 2009

4ALS

Were there no Babe, Henry Louis Gehrig
would be the player all fans remembered.
Regarding his baseball career, perhaps
New York Times writer John Kieren said it best;
“He was there day after day and year after year.
He never sulked or whined or went into a pot or a huff.”

In a seventeen year career, he batted .340, with a .632
slugging percentage. He averaged over RBIs a year.
He hit 496 home runs. He played in 2,130 consecutive games,
a record broken only recently by Cal Ripken.

Seventy years ago, on the forth of July at Yankee Stadium
Lou Gehrig said a few words, among them, these;
“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading
about a bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself
the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
This from a man who was informed that the disease he had,
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, had no cure and was fatal.
The disease remains so to this day.

Lou was many things; professional, capable, amiable,
exciting, dependable, explosive: No athlete in any sport
ever comprised the complete package this man did.
Yet to this day, what Lou did for ALS shines brighter
than his amazing career.

Every day, fourteen people are diagnosed with ALS;
all of them will die within three to five years of that day.

Lou’s example brought appreciation for life to even those
who suffer from ALS. In front of sixty thousand fans,
he chose to accent the positive instead of the negative.

May we who are so much more fortunate,
never forget this gracious lesson.

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