|Lou Gehrig's Farewell Speech - Audio|
Lou Gehrig retired from
baseball because of the degenerative disease
that would eventually take his life. On July 4, 1939 - New York
sportswriter Paul Gallico suggested the team have a recognition day to
honor Gehrig on July 4, 1939. There were more than 62,000 fans in
attendance as Gehrig stood on the field at
Yankee Stadium with the 1927
and 1939 Yankees. He fought back tears of overwhelming emotion and began
to speak his immortal words of thanks, calling himself “the luckiest man
on the face of the earth.” It was one of the most poignant and emotional
moments in the history of American sports, and there was not a dry eye
in Yankee Stadium. At the close of Gehrig’s speech,
Babe Ruth walked up,
put his arm around his former teammate and spoke in his ear the first
words they had shared since 1934.
Though there were so many microphones at the game, only four sentences of the speech survived on tape. Much of the speech was lost and the following was pieced together from the various newspapers of the day:
"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. I have been to ballparks for seventeen years and I 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 have considered 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 the white coats remember you with trophies, that’s something. When you have a father and mother who work all their lives so that 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 by saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an an awful lot to live for. Thank you."
When the above sound clip finishes click the start button below to hear a discussion of Lou Gehrig's final days.