…on the face of the earth.
It’s 70 years ago today that Lou Gehrig gave that speech in front of 61,808 fans at Yankee Stadium.
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.
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 six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine 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 (July 4th, 1939)
…another feel the pinch week.
In these days of woes and despair this Saturday’s “It happened this week” is facing cutbacks. Staff have been asked to take a one day cut in pay and so services have been reduced to links of past years postings of roughly (very roughly) this week gone by…
In this week it has to be noted that Mike Corby of The Babys was born on July 3rd but it was 1951 not 1955 as he was kind enough to point out.
On July 3rd 1971 Jim Morrison may or may not have died in a bathtub in Paris, thus joining, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones and Janis Joplin as the Js in the 27 Club
The Doors – “The End”
Jon Rauhouse Tune Up
