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LOU GEHRIG Baseball player Born in 1903 - Died in 1941

Lou Gehrig was one of baseball's great players. His parents didn't want him to make a career of baseball. They thought it was a waste of time, but he loved the game. He was on his high school baseball team. A talent scout saw him and offered him a sports scholarship * in college.

The family didn't have much money because his father was ill. His mother was a cook at the college, and Lou waited on tables to help pay his way.

He started playing for the New York Yankees in 1923. His parents scraped together $14 for him to make the trip to spring training camp in New Orleans. When he got there, he started looking for a job, but the team paid him some money in advance. (They usually paid the players at the end of the training camp.) He was able to concentrate on practicing and improving his skills.

Baseball Hall of Fame

He improved so much that two different times, he was named American League Most Valuable player. He was called the
"Iron Horse".

He played in every game for 14 years without missing even one. He played over 2000 games. That was a record which wasn't broken for 50 years.

But then something bad happened. He could barely swing the bat and he couldn't run around the bases any more. He knew something was wrong. He went to specialists * . They said he had a disease called ALS. The long name for it is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (am e uh TRO fic LAT er ul skler O sis). It attacks the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord * and the person becomes unable to move. Death usually comes in two to five years.

He knew he would not be able to continue playing baseball, so he resigned * . The Yankees held a special day in Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939 to honor him. In his speech he said his career in baseball made him "the luckiest man on the face of the earth". That same year he was voted into the Hall of Fame. Players were usually not voted into the Hall of Fame until after they had been retired for two years.

Even though he could no longer play baseball, he continued to work. He took a job serving on the New York State Parole Commission * . He kept working until he died in 1941.

It is said of him "his character was beyond reproach * ". This means no one could say anything bad about him, because he was such a good person.

The disease ALS became know as "Lou Gehrig's Disease".

This biography by Patsy Stevens, a retired teacher, was written in 2001.

A frequent question: "Who wrote this biography and when was it written?" Look on this Reference Citations Chart.

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RESEARCH LINKS

Lou Gehrig Official Website Lou Gehrig's farewell speech Lou Gehrig National Baseball Hall of Fame Gehrig legacy Sports Century Lou Gehrig, the Iron Horse Baseball History.com Lou Gehrig at Wikipedia Lou Gehrig biography with audio version Lou Gehrig Baseball library.com At biography.com search for Lou Gehrig. Scroll the panel for the "Video & Audio Results". Lou Gehrig Quotes Famous Quotes by QuoteDepot.Net From Word Central's Student Dictionary by Merriam - Webster (Pronunciation note: the schwa sound is shown by ə) scholarship Pronunciation: 'skahl-ər-"ship Function: noun : money given (as by a college) to a student to help pay for further education resign Pronunciation: ri-'zIn Function: verb 1 : to give up by a formal or official act 2 : to give up an office or position..... spinal cord Function: noun : the cord of nervous tissue that extends from the brain along the back in the cavity of the backbone, branches to form the spinal nerves, carries nerve impulses to and from the brain, and helps to control reflex actions specialist Pronunciation: 'spesh-(ə-)ləst Function: noun 1 : a person who studies or works at a special occupation or branch of learning .... reproach Pronunciation: ri-'prOch Function: noun 1 a : something that deserves blame or disgrace b : loss of reputation : commission Pronunciation: kə-'mish-ən Function: noun .... a group of persons directed to perform some duty.... Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man By David Adler / Harcourt Brace Lou Gehrig's perseverance is legendary. During the fourteen years as a first baseman for the NY Yankees, he didnt miss a single game. His stamina earned him the nickname "The Iron Horse" and helped him to set what then was a world record. Lou loved baseball and considered himself a very lucky man, even though on his 36th birthday he was diagnosed with a rare and fatal disease. This powerful biography traces Lou Gehrig's life, capturing his strength, modestly, and dignity for which this remarkable man will always be remembered. Recommended for ages 6 to 9. Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig By Jonathan Eig / Simon & Schuster Trade Sales Lou Gehrig was a baseball legend -- the Iron Horse, the stoic New York Yankee who was the greatest first baseman in history, a man whose consecutive-games streak was ended by a horrible disease that now bears his name. But as this definitive new biography makes clear, Gehrig's life was more complicated -- and, perhaps, even more heroic -- than anyone really knew. Drawing on new interviews and more than two hundred pages of previously unpublished letters to and from Gehrig, Luckiest Man gives us an intimate portrait of the man who became an American hero: his life as a shy and awkward youth growing up in New York City, his unlikely friendship with Babe Ruth (a friendship that allegedly ended over rumors that Ruth had had an affair with Gehrig's wife), and his stellar career with the Yankees, where his consecutive-games streak stood for more than half a century. What was not previously known, however, is that symptoms of Gehrig's affliction began appearing in 1938, earlier than is commonly acknowledged. Later, aware that he was dying, Gehrig exhibited a perseverance that was truly inspiring; he lived the last two years of his short life with the same grace and dignity with which he gave his now-famous "luckiest man" speech. Meticulously researched and elegantly written, Jonathan Eig's Luckiest Man shows us one of the greatest baseball players of all time as we've never seen him before. A LIBRARY OF ONLINE BOOKS and BOOK PREVIEWS Preview the Amazon books using the links below. Lou Gehrig, A Biography by William C. Kashatus (selected pages) Lou Gehrig, 1000 Readers by Carole Marsh (selected pages) Lou Gehrig, Baseball Hall of Famers by Robert Greenberger (selected pages) Lou Gehrig, A Life of Dedication, easy biography by Jennifer Boothroyd (selected pages) Lou Gehrig, Sports Heroes and Legends by Kevin Viola (selected pages) Lou Gehrig: One of Baseball's Greatest by Guernsey Van Riper (selected pages)

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2012-10-12 Great stuff on your video here is a link you will like http://www.sportsenthusists.com/category/m-l-b/ Stuart

2010-02-20 Question about MLA format. Look here: http://gardenofpraise.com/biographydates.htm

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Biographies in this Series

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	Martin Van Buren	Abraham Lincoln	Theodore Roosevelt	Franklin D. Roosevelt	Harry S. Truman	Dwight D. Eisenhower
	John F. Kennedy	Lyndon B. Johnson	Jimmy Carter	Ronald Reagan	Barack Obama	Calvin Coolidge
American Patriots	Benjamin Franklin	Francis Scott Key	Deborah Sampson	Molly Pitcher
World Leaders	Constantine	Alexander the Great	Winston Churchill
Inventors	Alexander Graham Bell	Johann Gutenberg	Cyrus McCormick	The Wright Brothers	Henry Ford	Thomas A. Edison
	Sequoyah	Nikola Tesla	Michael Faraday	Dean Kamen	Jack Kilby	Leonardo Da Vinci
	Donald O'Neal
Explorers	Christopher Columbus	Meriwether Lewis	Robert Peary	John Muir	Matthew Henson	Sir Edmund Hillary
	Kit Carson	Johnny Appleseed	Daniel Boone
Women who made a difference	Clara Barton	Helen Keller	Florence Nightingale	Joan of Arc	Amelia Earhart	Annie Oakley
	Susan B. Anthony	Elizabeth Keckly	Harriet Tubman	Anne Frank	Eleanor Roosevelt	Madam C.J. Walker
	Sadako Sasaki	Henrietta Lacks
Scientists	George Washington Carver	Sir Isaac Newton	Marie Curie	Louis Pasteur	Albert Einstein	Galileo
	Lise Meitner	Norman Borlaug	Benjamin Banneker
Educators	Noah Webster	Booker T. Washington	Aristotle	Mary McLeod Bethune
Physicians	Hippocrates	Walter Reed	Albert Schweitzer
Religious Leaders	George Muller	Increase Mather
Athletes	Lou Gehrig	Wilma Rudolph	Tiger Woods	Michael Phelps
Civil Rights Leaders	Martin Luther King	Rosa Parks	Sojourner Truth	Frederick Douglass	Mary Ann Shadd Cary	James Forten
	Gandhi	César Chávez	William Wilberforce	Nelson Mandela
Composers	Beethoven	Mozart
Authors	Laura Ingalls Wilder	Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)	Ernest Hemingway	Greg Mortenson	Phillis Wheatley
Artists	John James Audubon	Gutzon Borglum	Ansel Adams	Dale Chihuly	Van Gogh	Michelangelo
	Rembrandt	Grandma Moses	Cassatt	Renoir	Cezanne	Rockwell

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