Lou Gehrig’s famous speech was reproduced in yesterday’s local newspaper.  It was the first time I read the entire speech.  This speech was an awesome speech.  Gehrig’s attitude in the face of certain death remains impressive 70 years later.

Whatever your struggle, try to maintain a positive attitude.

“For the past two weeks, you’ve been reading about a bad break. Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.

I have been in ballparks for 17 years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

When you look around, wouldn’t you consider it a privilege to associate yourself with such fine-looking men as are standing in uniform in the ballpark today? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have (Yankee owner) Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow. To have spent six years with such a grand little fellow as (Yankee manager) Miller Huggins? To have spent the next nine years with that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Who wouldn’t feel honored to room with such a grand guy as Bill Dickey?

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 the groundskeepers and office staff and writers and old-timers and players and concessionaires all remember you with trophies, that’s something.

When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles against her own daughter, 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 in saying that I might have had a bad break, but I have an awful lot to live for. Thank you.”

Compiled by biographer and author Jonathan Eig.