Lou Gehrig's Luckiest Man Speech

For fourteen seasons Lou Gehrig was the most dependable player in baseball. He played in 2,130 consecutive games for the New York Yankees, a streak that earned him the nickname the Iron Horse. In 1938 his hitting and his body began to fail in ways no one could explain. On May 2, 1939, he took himself out of the lineup. In June doctors at the Mayo Clinic told him he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative disease of the nerves with no cure.

The Yankees declared July 4, 1939, Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day. Between games of a doubleheader against the Washington Senators, more than sixty thousand fans watched former teammates from the 1927 Murderers' Row lineup gather around home plate. Gehrig was presented with gifts and plaques, and he stood with his head down, apparently unable to speak. Manager Joe McCarthy finally urged him to the microphone.

He spoke for little more than a minute without notes. "For the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break," he said. "Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." He thanked his teammates, the owners, the groundskeepers, his parents, and his wife, and closed by saying he might have had a bad break but had an awful lot to live for. Babe Ruth, who had not spoken to him in years, threw his arms around him.

That day the Yankees retired his number 4, the first number retired by any major league team. He was elected to the Hall of Fame by special vote that December. Gehrig died on June 2, 1941, at thirty-seven, and the disease came to carry his name in the United States. The film The Pride of the Yankees fixed the speech in national memory a year later, and it remains the most famous words ever spoken on a ballfield.