They called him the iron horse. Year after year, injured or well, Lou Gehrig never missed a game for the New York Yankees. He played with lumbago, a concussion, even broken bones. Then, at the start of the 1939 season, Lou suddenly became slow and awkward in the field, ineffectual at bat. In a game with the Washington Senators, he went to bat four times and never even nicked the ball. He also muffed an easy throw. That’s when he told manager, Joe McCarthy, "I guess the time has come to take me out." His consecutive game record ended at 2,130, a record that may never be equaled.

Doctors discovered that Lou had a rare and fatal disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The next two years, as life ebbed from him, he refused to give in to the disease.

On July 4, 1939, Lou was honored at Yankee Stadium. The spectators fell silent as Gehrig stepped to the microphone and said, "I may have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for: I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." It was the most heartwarming and inspiring moment in the history of baseball.