This one is for all of you sports fans. Quiz: which professional athlete was nicknamed “The Iron Horse”? I’ll give you some clues:
• He was a professional baseball player in the 1920’s and 1930’s
• He holds the record for most grand slams (23 of them!)
• He was “The luckiest man on the face of the earth”
The answer: Lou Gehrig. Gehrig was a much beloved and accomplished first baseman for the New York Yankees. In 1939, after a record 2,130 consecutive major league baseball games, broken only recently in 1995 by Cal Ripken, Jr., Gehrig paid a visit to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. There he saw Dr. Charles William Mayo to find out why he was suddenly losing strength.
The answer was grim. Gehrig had Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) - a neuromuscular disease that progressively weakens muscles, eventually resulting in paralysis, and is unfortunately fatal and incurable. ALS attacks the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord which in turn deteriorates and kills the motor neurons. Those motor neurons control voluntary muscle movement so over time, the muscles atrophy and eventually become paralyzed. Other symptoms include trouble with swallowing or speech.
A few days after being diagnosed, Gehrig retired from baseball. The Yankees retired his number 4 uniform, the first uniform ever to be retired from Major League Baseball. A quote from his famous speech on “Lou Gehrig Appreciate Day” at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939, still brings tears to many baseball fans:
“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. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.
I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.”
According to the ALS Association, half of those diagnosed with ALS are given three or more years to live after diagnosis. Twenty percent live five years or more and only up to ten percent will live more than ten years. Gehrig was diagnosed in June 1939 and two years later, in June 1941, he died at age 37.
Although ALS is not fully understood, progress to treat and cure the disease is slowly moving forward. For more information, visit the ALS Association website.
Lou Gehrig (left) and Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939.