Soccer Dad

Sixty nine years ago

The first Iron Man's streak ends.

On May 2, 1939, New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig benches himself for poor play and ends his streak of consecutive games played at 2,130. "The Iron Horse" was suffering at the time from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), now known as "Lou Gehrig’s Disease."

Two months later he was honored by the Yankees.

On July 4, 1939, the Yankees held Lou Gehrig Day at Yankee Stadium. With over 60,000 fans in the stands and his former teammates there to honor him, Gehrig was overcome by emotion, and his legs shook from his developing paralysis. Gehrig stared hard at the ground, unable to speak, until his longtime manager Joe McCarthy and teammate Babe Ruth encouraged him. Then, in gratitude for his great career, and knowing he was dying from an unknown disease, he said: "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."