why did lou gehrig give his speech

Gehrig, Lou. However, it turns out that the road from the actual speech to the silver screen (now a pop culture touchstone as well) was not a direct one—especially since there was no known contemporaneous or a written transcription. So he stood, wobbly enough that Manager Joe McCarthy worried he might fall, in the summer heat between games of a doubleheader between the Yankees and Washington Senators. Lou Gehrig used pathos and repetition to encourage and thank all the fans and spectators that have supported him throughout his career. With his condition rapidly deteriorating, Gehrig put his name to a syndicated article (almost certainly ghostwritten) that explained what he felt was a lifetime of thankfulness: for his parents, for making his high school football team, for attending college, for signing with the Yankees, for Eleanor. But the crowd chanted—they wanted Lou to say something. It was July 4, 1939 — “Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day.”. It was very familiar to Eleanor — and all too difficult to watch. Observe how she integrates the research she did on the topic into her speech. For about an hour, though, the focus returned to the star of Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day. It was at this point that Ruth moved toward Lou, embraced him and said something that brought a smile to Lou’s face, leading sportswriter Jack Miley to wrote that Ruth “clasped baseball’s most famous invalid in a bear hug and Lou’s ceremony was a success. Only four lines from the speech have survived — and no official written version exists. and a dozen teammates from the 1927 Murderers’ Row team, including Babe Ruth, Waite Hoyt, Bob Meusel and Wally Pipp, whom Gehrig replaced at first base in 1925 and remained in the lineup until he had played in 2,130 consecutive games. Although he was delivering devastating news to his fans in the speech… Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees delivered his farewell speech on Lou Gehrig Day on July 4, 1939 at Yankee Stadium. … The Iron Man had reached the end. Cooper gave the speech with hesitations and moistened eyes, speaking of his good fortune in the face of tragedy. The Experiment, from The Atlantic and WNYC Studios, is a new weekly podcast that looks at the powerful ideas that shaped the United States—and what happens when America’s big ideals collide with people’s everyday lives. They were filled with gratitude for the people in his life: Eleanor, his parents, his mother-in-law, his Yankee managers, his roommate Bill Dickey, the New York Giants and the stadium’s groundskeepers. 1) Which of the following is not intended to … He had arrived that afternoon with something to say — if not the absolute will to say it. Lou Gehrig gave his speech in front of the Yankee’s fans that filled the stadium that day, as well as his fellow players. Nearly every image of Gehrig that day at Yankee Stadium conveyed his desolation. His purpose in this speech is to thank his fans and to explain how he has lived a good and fortunate life, even with ALS. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. Sign up for our newsletter! ALS is a progressive, fatal, neurogenerative disease that affects an estimated 20,000 Americans every year, according to the ALS Association. When the ceremony neared its end, Lou waved off the emcee Sid Mercer’s request to speak. If there had been a written speech, it is surprising that Eleanor had not pasted it into one of the scrapbooks she had meticulously filled to record his career and their precious few years together. Lou Gehrig gave his famous speech on July 4, 1939, at Yankee Stadium in front of 61,808 fans. Comment below or Send us a Tip. Yankees legend Lou Gehrig is known for his stellar career with the Bronx Bombers, including being an essential part of the storied 1927 team's "Murderers' Row" and his 56-year record for consecutive games played. His gratitude poured out: to his teammates; his mother, father, mother-in-law; McCarthy and his predecessor, Miller Huggins; his roommate Bill Dickey; the New York Giants, who played across the Harlem River in the Polo Grounds; sportswriters and groundskeepers and concessionaires, and, of course, Eleanor (“a tower of strength” who had “shown more courage than you have dreamed existed”). In Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), author Jonathan Eig offers a perspective of Eleanor’s strong say in the movie’s production, concerning wardrobe, Gehrig’s parents, and his Farewell Speech. For the last 76 years, Cooper’s portrayal of Gehrig has helped perpetuate the Iron Horse’s memory. On July 4, 1938, Lou Gehrig delivered a speech at Yankee Stadium after it was revealed that the baseball player had ALS. I don’t believe it. Share your email address to get our top stories each day. Lou Gehrig uses several rhetorical strategies to support his purpose. English Composition 1301 26 May 2012 Lou Gehrig’s Farewell Speech Analysis Imagine a young boy and his father going to the New York Yankees ballpark on a warm sunny day. In his first two seasons, he saw limited playing time, mostly as a pinch hitter – he played in only 23 games and was not on the Yankees' 1923 World Series roster. Lou Gehrig, first baseman for the New York Yankees, is shown at the microphone during Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day, a farewell to the slugger, at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939. By the time he was asked to speak, he made a gesture to the M.C., the sportswriter Sid Mercer, that he would not say a word. Soon thereafter people started referring to the disease he had by his name: Lou Gehrig’s Disease. “I shall not ask him to speak,” Mercer said to the crowd. The doctors said I couldn’t play baseball. If Mankiewicz and Swerling’s words struck a hyperbolic chord, Gehrig’s did not. “But today... today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”. Do you know the scoop? His career cut short by ALS, Gehrig spoke to the crowd at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939, which was designated Lou Gehrig Day. And it was quite a career: a batting average of .340, 493 home runs, 1,995 runs batted in and a lifetime O.P.S. Whatever his preparation, Gehrig delivered a magnificent speech — short, memorable and filled with gratitude despite the diagnosis of ALS that had forced him to retire and endure the growing indignities of a body that was betraying him. He limped. arrow The ceremony would have ended with gift-giving and speechifying by luminaries like New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and Postmaster General James Farley if he had not given his speech. Gehrig brought such significant attention to ALS that it is now known as “Lou Gehrig’s disease.” They had rolled to a 51-16 record and were 12 1/2-games ahead of the Boston Red Sox. The speech itself has become the stuff of legend, even though no complete recording, on film or audio, remains. Lou Gehrig, July 4, 1939, Yankee Stadium “Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. To McCarthy—who adored Lou—he looked wobbly. June 8, 1942. Emotion had overcome him. The dynamics of his marriage to the former Eleanor Twitchell — who had already become his legacy keeper — suggests that a speech was her idea. Gehrig died on June 2, 1941. “If Lou starts to fall, catch him,” McCarthy told Babe Dahlgren, who had replaced Gehrig as the Yankees’ first baseman two months earlier. That would have been a bold and risky decision given Lou’s shyness and lack of experience at giving speeches. Gehrig did not have a written speech to deliver — and no actual copy of it appears to exist. It really made the speech sound more booming and epic. And Eleanor was there when Cooper re-created her husband’s indelible words. On this hot and sunny Tuesday, Lou had already waited in the dugout during the Yankees’ loss to the Washington Senators in the first game of a doubleheader, then stood for the entire length of a ceremony he sought to avoid. All rights reserved. Lou Gehrig died just two years later at age 37 at his home in Riverdale, New York. Gehrig’s growing frailty contrasted with the physically hale men surrounding him on the infield: the current Yankees, the Senators. Gehrig died from ALS in 1941, and his life was further immortalized a year later by Gary Cooper in the Hollywood depiction of his life, The Pride of the Yankees. On July 4, 1939, in a farewell speech at Yankee Stadium, a terminally ill Lou Gehrig declared himself the “luckiest man on the face of the Earth.” Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day Lou Gehrig was the Yankees’ star first baseman and cleanup hitter, … In words that echoed the speech, he wrote, “This summer I got a bad break. When Lou spoke, he leaned into the microphones. In another extant sentence, he refers to his 1939 teammates as “fine-looking men” who are “standing in uniform in the ballpark today.” And his last line also survived: “And I might have given a bad break but I’ve got an awful lot to live for.”. 3 Parsons, Louella O. Gothamist is supported by the American Express Foundation. “We want Lou!” they shouted. No, Cooper was not athletic enough to play as well as Gehrig did — Cooper had to learn baseball from scratch, which explains his mediocrity in the scenes where he was required to swing a bat or catch a ball— but that did not matter. “I do not believe that I should.”, But Gehrig relented as fans chanted, “We want Lou!”. Rhetorical Analysis of Lou Gehrig's "Luckiest Man" Speech Cooper had morphed into Gehrig, not because he looked like him or could play baseball like him, but because he knew so well how to play men of quiet dignity. His voice — the sound of a New Yorker who had been raised in Manhattan by German immigrant parents — reverberated around the stadium. “You can count on the wording being perfect,” she wrote to Goldwyn on April 16, 1942, when the shooting of Pride was nearly over, “because Lou and I worked on it the night before it was delivered, and naturally my memory could not fail me in this instance.”, Conceding that she had set the speech down from memory suggests that if there was an actual written speech, it had been lost. Accompanying them was Rosaleen Doherty, a reporter for the Daily News who wrote that Eleanor did not cry as Lou spoke “although all around us, women and quite a few men, were openly sobbing.”, Eleanor told her: “I’m glad Lou was able to walk out there and make his little talk over the microphone. Gehrig was by far the most famous person of his time to develop the disease, so it was renamed after his death in 1941. Added the New York Post: “He was close to breaking down.”, Mercer told the crowd: “He is too moved to speak.”. Gehrig The purpose wanted to thank the baseball community for supporting him throughout his career and raise awareness for ALS and its victims. The speech was filmed on Goldwyn’s studio lot — not at the other Wrigley Field, in Los Angeles, where most of the baseball action was shot. Lou stood alone except when he stepped forward to shake hands with well-wishers or briefly hold the gifts he set down on the infield. All was dark, save for the spotlights that illuminated Cooper as he spoke. Lou Gehrig Speech Analysis 1622 Words | 7 Pages. Lou had wept as he spoke — as did many of the nearly 62,000 other people in Yankee Stadium on that Fourth of July 80 years ago. I’m still the luckiest man on earth when you add things up. Gehrig offered some perspective later that year after he had begun working as a member of New York City’s Parole Commission. Emily gave this informative speech on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, in her public speaking class. At the time of the address in 1939, the disease was not understood nearly as well as it is today. “He gulped and fought to keep back the tears as he kept his eyes fastened to the ground,” The New York Times wrote. “People say that I’ve had a bad break today,” Cooper says, as Gehrig. of 1.080, third in major league history to Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. Gehrig looked lonely, even desolate, a solo figure on the infield, surrounded by retired teammates from the 1927 Yankees and members of the current team who had carried on brilliantly without him, with Babe Dahlgren now at first base. Gehrig had … In 1925 he batted .295, with 20 home runs and 68 runs batted in (RBIs). This Friday, July 4 th, marks the 75 th year of Lou Gehrig’s iconic farewell speech when he stepped away from the game of baseball because of his struggle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). I have been a lucky guy.”. By July 4, 1939, the Yankees were playing as if they did not miss the ailing Lou Gehrig. By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms. Gehrig’s mother was a dominant force in his life, and even after becoming a star Yankee he lived with his parents until shortly before his marriage at age 30. There is little record of the speech known as baseball’s Gettysburg Address, but there is that movie. Lou Gehrig’s “Farewell to Baseball Address” is a prime example of using a small amount of words to help get a large point across. For him, this is crucifixion as well as triumph, because he knows he’ll have to die twice and perhaps the worst ordeal for him is that little death known as Goodbye.”. Lou Gehrig could not have looked any lonelier. Indeed, there was nothing silly about a 36-year-old man of remarkable achievements being forced to retire from baseball because of the then-little-known disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and telling the world: “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”. They gave it a rewrite (rendering it less literary than the original) that reduced Gehrig’s litany of thanks and moving the “luckiest man” line to the end where it had a greater dramatic wallop that it did in the original. McCarthy whispered enouragement to him and Lou hobbled to the bank of microphones. Lou Gehrig took a unique approach in his farewell speech. Instead of giving an emotional farewell speech, he displayed optimism and gratefulness. Lou began experiencing his first neurological symptoms in 1938, right around the time of his 35th birthday. His legacy also rests with his retirement speech—dubbed "baseball's Gettysburg Address"—which he gave on July 4, 1939. Back in the comfort of the clubhouse with teammates and friendly reporters around him, he asked, “Did my speech sound silly?” It was a humble man’s question with an easy answer: it did not.

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