Lucky Man

Once, during my incarceration at a parochial grammar school in suburban New York, I had to do a book report on an “inspirational” figure. Most of the other kids picked athletes of the day or some dusty historical person. I was at a loss. I had no one who made my Ninja Turtles world a better place (besides the Ninja Turtles themselves). Primarily, this was because I had a surplus of spina bifida and a deficit of friends, and no one around me or in the larger culture even looked like me.

It was that superficial.

The school librarian, an old lioness of the stacks, who, one suspected, may have witnessed the Crucifixion firsthand, usually sat behind a desk bathed in red and yellow light streaking through a stained-glass window of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and took no guff. She had seen it all, and my third-grader-on-crutches woe was old hat. She got to her arthritic feet, heavily sighing like the Catholic champ she was, and returned with a crud-covered book. It had a baseball player in mid-swing on the tattered front. I rolled my eyes. I had not gotten into the sport yet, and undoubtedly, the other boys would make fun of me for being inspired by someone I could never emulate.

They would have been wrong.

The man on the cover was Lou Gehrig, who played first base seventeen seasons with the New York Yankees. Among many notable statistics, Gehrig held the consecutive-games-played record (1, 230) for more than half a century after his death. They called him “The Iron Horse,” not for nothing.

I was somewhat baffled by the librarian’s suggestion. About the only thing Lou Gehrig and I had in common was being handsome New Yorkers.
I read the book at the kitchen table. It was one of those womb-to-tomb narratives, nothing special for this discerning lad.

Then came the “tomb” part or, more accurately, the three years preceding it.

It stopped me in my tracks, and I think the librarian knew this would be the case. I held the book to my chest, eyeing my mother making dinner. Did she know the critical secret of this story? Did I dare let it out?

During the 1938 season, Gehrig’s abilities to run, field, and hit waned considerably. He insisted he was tired, but his coordination declined such that he benched himself for the remaining games. His last appearance was against the Washington Senators on April 30th, 1939, ending his historic streak.

Gehrig traveled to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where doctors ran a battery of tests that concluded he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The neurological condition ate away at the nerves, causing a loss of motor functions, paralysis, and eventually death. The mind retained its sharpness throughout as the body wasted away.

Lou Gehrig died on June 2nd, 1941. He was 37 years old, younger than I am now writing this sentence.

What I remember from that time was how protective I felt of Gehrig’s struggle. He didn’t need my help, having passed into legend as both a great player and a man who died terribly. Still, the way he carried himself to his end - with dignity, humility, and, above all, grit - spoke so loudly it irrevocably turned my heels away from seeing my physical challenges as weaknesses. In my young mind, Gehrig never allowed circumstances to drag him down. In his legendary farewell speech to his teammates and fans on July 4th, 1939, he finished with:

“So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for…”

I didn’t fully understand it at the time, but Gehrig’s story planted a seed, and the tree still grows today. What inspired me about that life was not that suffering besieged it but that he chose grace over that suffering.

My favorite anecdote about Lou Gehrig was that, during the initial examination, the Mayo doctors X-rayed him, discovering he had broken every single bone in both his hands during his tenure with the Bronx Bombers.

He never reported it, and he kept playing, refusing to give up or disappoint anyone.

I don’t know if I could have done that. Yet, I do feel and have always felt that it matters showing up and acknowledging pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.

I’ve learned to go on by this man’s example. Sometimes, when I’ve got my back to the wall, and I feel like folding, I ask, “What would you do, Lou?”
The quiet response has always been the same: “Keep swinging.”

As of June 2nd, 2021, the eightieth anniversary of his death, Lou Gehrig Day is now an official thing — only the third designation in Major League Baseball. I’ll take this moment to express gratitude to a man I never met for being there in one way or another. Getting back up again and not letting the bastards grind you down has always been a good thing.

So, Lou, wherever you are, and I’m sure Eleanor is with you, know that I’m the lucky man, and every day is Lou Gehrig Day.