Heinrich Ludwig Gehrig II

Heinrich Ludwig Gehrig II,

better known as;
The Iron Horse Lou Gehrig

Although my first heroes were Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, as I become more familiar with players of the past. There was another man I could call my hero.
Of all things I have read about and even been told
by some old time fans who met him or knew more about him than the papers said at the time.
He deserves all the admiration for courage and determination and grace,
all of which he seems to have had in abundance.
He is now and forever will be my favorite Yankee and Hero.

Though there were so many microphones at the game, only four sentences of the speech survived on tape.
Much of the speech was lost and the following was pieced together from the various newspapers of the day:

Lou Gehrig's Farewell Speach Audio

"Fans, 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 to ballparks for seventeen years and I 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 have considered 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 the white coats remember you with trophies, that’s something. When you have a father and 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 by saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an an awful lot to live for. Thank you."

Yankee Stadium 1928-1936