Tilting at Windmills

As he carefully made the difficult walk towards Yankee Stadium’s home plate on July 4, 1939 – 70 years ago today – Lou Gehrig knew this would be his final goodbye. Unbeknownst to fans who tearfully thought he was just leaving baseball, Lou somehow knew this might be his actual final goodbye.

It had to be incredibly difficult for anyone who was a fan of his to see the man who played in 2,130 straight games and was known as the Iron Horse have to set awards and trophies in front of him because he was too weak to hold any of them. Lou knew that he was suffering from ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), an incurable, neurodegenerative disease that cruelly destroys the nerves controlling body and muscle movement while keeping everything upstairs intatct. He’d received the diagnosis on his birthday – June 19, 1939 – from the famed Dr. Charles William Mayo himself. Lou likely understood that he would someday be literally a shell, unable to communicate, eat or control any bodily function, all the while screaming silently for somebody to help. He still took the time, however, to wave back at a group of Boy Scouts who welcomed him off a train in Washington, D.C. as he was arriving for a game.

“They’re wishing me luck – and I’m dying,” he confided to a reporter.

Gehrig and Ruth were part of an unstoppable Murderer's Row.

Lou’s speech 70 years ago today stands as one of the most courageous, memorable events in all of sports history. His proclamation that he was “the luckiest man on the face of the earth” as he was dying still tugs at heartstrings today:

“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

A bad break – that’s how he described it.

People knew something was up with Lou in the 1938 season. While in the midst of his iron man streak (since broken by Cal Ripken, Jr), he still put up respectable numbers (batted .295 with 114 RBI, 29 HR, 170 hits and a .523 slugging percentage), but it was a far cry from 1937 when he had batted .351 and slugged .643. In 1938 spring training, he didn’t hit a single home run and, while normally a superior and crafty baserunner, his coordination had slipped noticeably. By late April, he had the worst statistics of his career – 1 RBI and just a .143 batting average.

Sports reporter James Kahn knew something was wrong:

I think there is something wrong with him. Physically wrong, I mean. I don’t know what it is, but I am satisfied that it goes far beyond his ball-playing. I have seen ballplayers ‘go’ overnight, as Gehrig seems to have done. But they were simply washed up as ballplayers. It’s something deeper than that in this case, though. I have watched him very closely and this is what I have seen: I have seen him time a ball perfectly, swing on it as hard as he can, meet it squarely — and drive a soft, looping fly over the infield. In other words, for some reason that I do not know, his old power isn’t there… He is meeting the ball, time after time, and it isn’t going anywhere.

On May 2, 1939, as he was about to play in his record 2,131st game, he approached Yankee Manager Joe McCarthy and said “I’m benching myself, Joe.” Lou presented the lineup card personally to the stunned umpire crew and the Briggs Stadium P.A. announcer in Detroit told the fans shortly thereafter: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the first time Lou Gehrig’s name will not appear on the Yankee lineup in 2,130 consecutive games.” The home Tiger crowd gave Gehrig a standing ovation as he sat in the dugout, tears welling in his eyes.

He tried to stay with the team through the 1939 season, but even walking to home plate to deliver the lineup card (a duty he proudly performed as team captain) was becoming increasingly difficult. After the season, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia offered Lou a job with the city’s parole commission at a salary of $5,700 a year (about the same as he was making with the Yankees). ALS doesn’t allow you to slowly slip away, though: Lou was going fast. Within a year, he was unable to tie his own shoelaces or sign his name.

Almost two years to the day from his diagnosis, the Iron Horse, Lou Gehrig, passed away on June 2, 1941, just 17 days before his 38th birthday. His life, his courage and especially his 277-word speech, delivered on Independence Day, is a source of inspiration for those suffering from his same debilitating ailment – known today as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

The significance is even greater for those of us at TaW. We lost one of our best friends, affectionately known as “mook,” last November to ALS. Mook was a father of three, a husband and an outdoorsman. He started a non-profit in Austin that served children of divorced families. Mook was also one of the biggest Sooner fans any of us have ever met. He and I personally traveled to places like South Bend, New Orleans, Miami and, of course, Dallas to watch the Crimson and Cream.

Mook was diagnosed with ALS in October of 2006. His spirit never wavered, though, nor did his love for the Sooners. His last OU-TX game was in a wheelchair from behind the south endzone in 2007. Though he couldn’t speak and any communication was difficult, you could almost feel him symbolically jumping out of his chair as the Sooners held on to win the game late.

TaW was begun as a tribute to our friend Mook. Every once in awhile, you may see a Category titled “mook would love this,” or his catch phrase, “mook says ‘check it out’.” I wish that everything we put on here would fit those categories. I can guarantee that Mook would have loved these past few months of the BCS-gate, Asterisk-gate and Blake Griffin’s incredible season.

In honor of Iron Horse Lou Gehrig and our man Mook, please take a minute today to learn more about ALS and, if you can, lend your support to help find a cure.

Boomer Sooner, y’all.