BASEBALL

I have always found a passion for baseball games. I do not know if it is because my dad played as a kid and took us to multiple games. I have vivid moments of when I was kid going to the St. Louis Royals game and playing around with my sister during the games. My parents, now just my father’s home is fully decorated in signed baseballs and jersey from the Yankees and Cardinals. It amazes me how much money he will spend on random collections. When I think of summer, I remember the time our family went to a St. Louis Cardinal baseball game at Busch Stadium. There was a fundraiser held for patients that had been fully confined to a wheel chair. My mother was determined to be down on the baseball field taking her pictures with all the Cardinal players. The security officers took us through the VIP area and let my mom, sister and I explore and let me tell you it was the most amazing place and definitely, lots of money put into it. My mother sat in her wheelchair completely ecstatic and at that point, I knew that she was not thinking about her disease. I think about the movie the bucket list and I know that was one of hers on the checklist, meeting the St. Louis Cardinals-head coach Tony La Russa. The St. Louis Cardinals seem to be playing well in the pre-games, which help them out towards the main season. My mother always focused her disease around Lou Gehrig since that is what ALS is based off in the 1930s. It is a rare disease and completely paralyzes a person. Lou Gehrig was the greatest man in history for his prowess as a hitter, consecutive games-played record and its subsequent longevity, and the pathos of his farewell from baseball at age 36(Lou Gehrig). Lou Gehrig played for the Yankees for over two-thousand games in his career and rewarded with the Most Valuable Player from 1927-1936. This disease affects multiple people every day and one day there will be a cure. Lou Gehrig and ALS patients refer to this note:
Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.
Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I'm lucky.
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 everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies — that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter — that's something. When you have a father and a 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 been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.
— Lou Gehrig at Yankee Stadium, July 4, 1939