Going to bat against ALS
MLB declares June 2 as Lou Gehrig Day, the date that marks his streak’s start, his death
The first time Lou Gehrig drew notice at Wrigley Field, he was playing for New York’s High School of Commerce and had just turned 17.
Dubbed “the Babe Ruth of the high schools” — and misidentified in the Chicago Tribune as “Gherig” — baseball’s future Iron Horse earned a headline with a two-out, ninth-inning grand slam in a 12-6 exhibition victory over Lane Tech.
Close to 101 years later, Gehrig was celebrated Wednesday at Wrigley and across Major League Baseball, which has dubbed June 2 as Lou Gehrig Day this season and going forward.
The plan is to annually celebrate the memory of what he did on the field and the stoic grace with which he left it, including his poignant “luckiest man” farewell to fans.
But beyond that, the plan also is to spotlight the atrophying disease that cut him down, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The hope is this will raise awareness and funds for ALS research, support those the disease affects and acknowledge efforts to pursue a cure.
June 2 was selected partly because it’s the date Gehrig replaced Wally Pipp as the New York Yankees first baseman in 1925. (His streak of 2,130 successive games began with a pinch-hitting appearance the day before.)
Wednesday also was the 80th anniversary of Gehrig’s death, 17 days before what would have been his 38th birthday.
Gehrig joins Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente as players MLB remembers each year with a day in their honor.
“I definitely am super-excited about (this) inaugural Lou Gehrig Day throughout Major League Baseball,” Cubs announcer Jon “Boog” Sciambi said on a video chat with reporters that MLB put together Tuesday. “It’s super-personal for me.”
Sciambi is a founding board member of Project Main St., an ALS charity that’s the brainchild of Sciambi’s childhood friend Tim Sheehy, who succumbed to the disease in 2007.
“At age 35, he was diagnosed with the disease and in the middle of it was overcome by the financial burden of the disease, and so he came up with our charter,” Sciambi said. “That’s a charity I still help run today for patient care because people are so overwhelmed by the costs.”
Only two ballparks remain from Gehrig’s playing days, and Boston’s Fenway Park is the only surviving edifice he visited regularly. Predating interleague play in the regular season, he appeared in only four games at Wrigley after his high school triumph, returning for World Series victories over the Cubs in 1932 and ‘38.
He didn’t finish the 1939 season, and by mid-1941 he was gone. Yet his presence and the legacy of his life and death reverberate to this day.
“We’re hoping that this Lou Gehrig Day each year will shine a spotlight on this disease that took Lou from us way too early and many others, so the general public gets a better understanding of just how devastating and cruel this particular disease is,” said Phil Green, a national college football champion at Washington in 1991 who was diagnosed with ALS in 2018 and is a driving force behind MLB’s day for Gehrig.
“(ALS) often selects the most fit and athletic people and slowly strips them of their ability to use their hands, to walk, to talk and eventually to breathe on their own. There are no cures or FDA-approved drugs that significantly slow the disease, but there are some promising treatments that are in clinical trials. But most of the … people living with ALS never get access to them and die without having the chance to try them.”
Green noted Gehrig expected there would be a cure for ALS in his lifetime when he was diagnosed in 1939.
“Sadly,” he said, “if Lou were diagnosed today, he would have the same prognosis as he did over 80 years ago. Let that sink in for a minute.”
Dr. Merit Cudkowicz of the Healey Center at Massachusetts General Hospital said what has changed since Gehrig’s time “is the coordination and cooperation among researchers, clinicians, people with illness in their families.”
The problem, she said, is the illness is no longer as rare as it once seemed. Roughly 5,000 people every year are diagnosed with ALS in the United States. Former Chicago Bears great Steve McMichael revealed in April that he is one of them.
While all 30 MLB teams marked Lou Gehrig Day one way or another, the Cubs, who closed out their series with the visiting San Diego Padres, did so with an “All in 4-ALS Super-Heroes” theme.
Festivities included an auction of items and experiences, a guaranteed payout of at least $10,000 for a 50⁄50 raffle with proceeds earmarked for ALS charities, a T-shirt giveaway for fans in the bleachers and Wrigley Field Rooftops and more.
The Cubs commissioned illustrator and graphic designer Kev Roche to create superhero-style renditions of Jake Arrieta, Javier Báez, Kris Bryant, Willson Contreras and Anthony Rizzo, pairing each with stories of people affected by ALS picked out with assistance from Project Main St. Player-autographed Roche prints were auctioned online along with other items and experiences to benefit Project Main St.
The Cubs had former NFL player Steve Gleason and his son involved with the ceremonial first pitch. There also was an ALS recognition ceremony during the fourth inning. Sciambi, for the first time, sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch.
“And I’m terrified,” Sciambi said Tuesday. “I just wanted to share that.”