Honoring The Great Lou Gehrig, MLB Teams Up With ALS

Major League Baseaball pays respect to one of its all-time greats this Fourth of July by helping to raise awareness for ALS, the disease that took Lou Gehrig at age 38.

Partnering with four major non-profit organizations, MLB will pay tribute to “The Iron Horse” during all games played on Saturday, July 4th. The “4♦ALS Awareness” campaign will culminate with the following words being read at the end of each game played on that day–the 70th anniversary of “Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day” at Yankee Stadium.

“For the past two weeks you have been reading about a 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 kindess and encouragement from you fans.”                       ~ Lou Gehrig, July 4, 1939

The four organizations teaming up for the campaign are The ALS Association, Project A.L.S., Augie’s Quest, and ALS TDI. 

Below is a video of the classy Gehrig giving his infamous speech to a packed Yankee Stadium in 1939.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 7:02 am and is filed under Charitable Organizations, Events, Videos, sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.