As a first baseman for the New York Yankees baseball team, Lou Gehrig played in 2,130 consecutive games from 1925 to 1939, setting a major league record and had a career batting average of .340. He once hit four home runs in a game, and to this day still holds many other major league records. On July 4, 1939, he stood before more than 60,000 fans at Yankee Stadium and confirmed what everyone seemed to know, that the "Pride of the Yankees" had been [dealt a terrible blow.] diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (now often called Lou Gehrig's disease), a rare disease that causes spinal paralysis, Gehrig gave one of the most poignant and meaningful speeches in sports history. This speech was much more than a speech given by a regular old ball player who was calling it quits. This was a speech that came in a time of need and that turned the heads of millions of baseball fans. It redefined and set the tone of what ball players really are; everyday human beings with hearts, bodies, and souls, like the rest of us. Ball players may have been looked at as if they were indestructible and emotionless, but this speech Gehrig gave illustrated clearly that baseball is just a game and that there are more important things in life like family and friends. Gehrig wanted the fans to realize that life doesn't go on forever, so you better enjoy it to its fullest. Less than two years after Gehrig gave this speech, on June 2, 1941, he died in Riverdale, N.Y. at the age of 39. .
The public's reaction to Gehrig's sudden retirement gave rise to one of the most inspiring and dramatic episodes in sport. A man of only thirty-seven years of age and a sports icon for years, he explained to the nation that he was dying from a fatal disease. His manager, Joe McCarthy, pushed Gehrig, a humble man who didn't even want to speak that 4th of July, to say a few words to the crowd. .
The first two lines out of Gehrig's mouth could easily be the most famous in all of sport's history, "Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got.