Wow! The San Francisco Giants bested the Texas Rangers 4 games to 1 to claim the 2010 World Series Major League Baseball Title! The hype and buzz is everywhere in the Bay! Most fans seem taken by surprise. The ragtag Giants team were unlikely champions which makes the victory especially sweet! Way To Go Giants!
My favorite baseball player from history (no, it's not Barry Bonds) is Lou Gehrig. Playing for the New York Yankees, Gehrig's baseball career was cut short when he was diagnosed with ALS.
When the Yankee's retired his #4 jersey on July 4th, 1939, Babe Ruth spoke followed by a classy speech by Lou Gehrig (see below). Gehrig's appreciation for the fans, the players, the game, and his family make me like the sport of baseball even more. He passed away 2 years after the ALS diagnosis at the age of 37.
"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 17 years and 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 consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball's greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent 6 years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next 9 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 white coats remember you with trophies - that's something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter - that's something. When you have a father and a 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 in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for. Thank you. -Lou Gehrig at Yankee Stadium, July 4, 1939
10 years later, poet Ogden Nash, penned this clever verse as a fitting tribute to Lou Gehrig:
"G is for Gehrig, The Pride of the Stadium;
His record pure gold, His courage, pure radium."
