Lou Gehrig's Farewell To Baseball Address

Lou Gehrig’s Farewell to Baseball Address Saying goodbye to an athlete you have been watching is always difficult to do. Even though we see our favorite football, baseball, or basketball athletes retire and leave their sport, it isn’t the end of the road for them. However, Lou Gehrig was faced with a deadly disease that would kill him two years later. He still managed to address his fans and is still remembered for not only by excelling on the Baseball Diamond, but by delivering a speech that still touches a lot of people’s hearts to this day.

Lou Gehrig had to retire from the MLB because he was diagnosed with ALS, a disease that slowly starts to make every muscle in your body fail, until you pass away. To this day, there is

By saying this phrase at the start of his speech, because he wants his audience to know that all though his faced with this deadly disease, he believes all the positive experiences out weigh the negative ones. Throughout the speech, he acknowledges his teammates and people he met through the MLB. However, his primary audiences are baseball fans in general. Throughout his speech, Lou calls ALS a “bad break” and only mentions this phrase two times in his speech. He states “ I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for,” (2) by saying this, he is convincing the audience that they don’t need to feel pity or sorrow because “life goes on and he was proud of his life.” (DeCesare 3). In his speech, he mentions how the New York Giants, his biggest rival, sends him a gift. He says, “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”

The Babe walked over to the stooped figure at the microphone and threw his arms around Lou's neck. Photographers froze the embrace in time.”(Wulf 4) According to ESPN, Lou's speech became known as, “Baseball's Gettysburg Address.” Many people find it remarkable that during his speech, Lou hardly showed any signs of slurred speech, which is a characteristic of ALS. “The words had been written down by Lou, as he worked on the speech the night before. But when it came time to deliver them, he spoke from memory. ‘He was groping for some way to phrase the emotions that usually were kept securely locked up,’ said Eleanor Gehrig, his wife.”(1) “The reaction to his simple, honest words by those who listened in over the radio or later read the lines in the newspapers was any indication, Lou had succeeded more than he could have imagined.”(1) Lou’s words were the most memorable he ever spoke, because he was a man who didn’t speak