Has there ever been a more emotional moment in baseball than the ceremony held to honor the great Lou Gehrig’s record for consecutive games, which came to an end at 2,130? At the age of 36, Gehrig was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the debilitating disease that now bears his name. On July 4, 1939, before a capacity crowd, the New York Yankees retired Gehrig’s number 4 (he would be the first player in Major League Baseball history to receive that accolade), and gave him a plethora of gifts, plaques, and trophies. Gehrig addressed the crowd, telling them, “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.” The applause rang out and a clearly shaken Gehrig wiped the tears away, Babe Ruth embraced him, and the crowd chanted “We love you, Lou.”
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