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It had to be surreal for the sold-out crowd at Yankee Stadium on the Fourth of July in 1939 watching one of their heroes, Lou Gehrig, slowly step up to the microphone and thank everyone for honoring him on his mid-season retirement from baseball.
				Here was baseball&rsquo;s iron man, soon to be named to the Baseball Hall of Fame, who played in a then record 2,130 consecutive games, telling everyone his playing days were over. Less than two years later, his life would be over as well.
				A few weeks before that hastily planned ceremony, news of Gehrig&rsquo;s medical diagnosis stunned the baseball world and beyond. Few people had previously heard of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis &#8211; ALS &#8211; or that there was no cure for this fatal condition. ALS is commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig&rsquo;s Disease, and even now, 82 years later, his ongoing star power continues to keep ALS in the public eye.
				Recently, Major League Baseball announced a Lou Gehrig Day to be held annually on June 2, the anniversary of Gehrig&rsquo;s death in 1941. Ironically, Lou also made the first start in his consecutive games played streak on June 2, 16 years prior to the date of his passing.
				On this date each year, all teams will wear a special &ldquo;4-ALS&rdquo; patch on their uniforms, recognizing Gehrig&rsquo;s jersey number retired by the New York Yankees and the disease that cost him his career and life at the young age of 37.
				&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a great day for baseball and a fitting honor for a man who always represented baseball with honor,&rdquo; said Jonathan Eig, writer of &ldquo;Luckiest Man, The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig.&rdquo; &ldquo;Gehrig faced ALS courageously, convinced a cure would soon be found. I suspect he&rsquo;d be disappointed the cure hasn&rsquo;t been found yet, but he&rsquo;d be proud to be in the ongoing fight.&rdquo;
				The idea that something had to be wrong with Gehrig began during spring training in 1939. The once feared slugger was still making solid contact, but instead of hitting home runs, the ball was falling meekly off his bat. Gehrig himself felt something wasn&rsquo;t quite right the previous year, and while his statistics for the 1938 regular season were not up to his high standards &#8211; a .295 batting average, 114 runs batted in, .523 slugging percentage, 29 home runs, and only 75 strikeouts in 689 plate appearances &#8211; they would be considered MVP worthy today.
				&ldquo;For the past two weeks you&rsquo;ve been hearing about a bad break,&rdquo; Gehrig said on July 4, 1939. &ldquo;Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. &#8230; I might have been given a bad break, but I&rsquo;ve got an awful lot to live for.&rdquo;
				That &ldquo;having something to live for&rdquo; drive seen in so many ALS patients is the reason there will now be a Lou Gehrig Day each year.
				Brian Wayne Galentine, a songwriter who has since passed from ALS, sparked the idea two years ago that major league baseball should have an annual day for Gehrig similar to the yearly observances honoring Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente. Brian, along with his friends Adam Wilson, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2015, and Chuck Haberstroh, whose mother was diagnosed four years ago, worked hard to get the 30 individual major league baseball teams on board, and with that unanimous backing major league baseball made the annual Lou Gehrig Day designation official.
				Baseball&rsquo;s involvement with ALS, though, goes well beyond Lou Gehrig, with many teams raising money to strike out ALS. The Philadelphia Phillies, for example, adopted ALS as their primary charity in 1984. A special display, Baseball and ALS, at the Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., features Gehrig prominently, of course, but also includes pitcher Jim &ldquo;Catfish&rdquo; Hunter, who passed away from ALS complications at age 53 in 1999.
				Then there is Pete Frates, whose glove is in Cooperstown. Frates, who played baseball at Boston College and in the German Baseball League, was diagnosed with ALS in 2012. While not a household name as a ballplayer, Frates is well known for being a visible and driving force behind the Ice Bucket Challenge that has raised more than $200 million for medical research and funded a new medication to help slow the progression of ALS.
				That&rsquo;s a significant sign of hope for the approximately 5,000 people in the United States diagnosed each year with ALS. And now, Lou Gehrig Day is an opportunity to remember everyone affected by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and the thousands of lives lost to ALS, including people here in our home community.
				Lives like Jimmy Duffy of the Pittston area, a fun-loving, wonderful friend we lost several years ago; as well as my brother, Carl, who passed from ALS in December 2015; and his old college classmate at Temple University, George Curry, the record-setting football coach at Berwick, Lake Lehman and Wyoming Valley West who died only months later on April 1, 2016.
				Just as Gehrig&rsquo;s Yankee teammates suspected something was wrong with Lou, my family and I knew the same with Carl. It was difficult to watch him, once a fine athlete and many years ago a key member of the track team at Kingston High School, day by day become more weak, less vocal and less mobile. That&rsquo;s what ALS does to a person. Carl was a good golfer, but when Conrad &ldquo;Connie&rdquo; Schintz and I golfed with him the year before he was diagnosed, Carl didn&rsquo;t have the same distance on his shots and didn&rsquo;t beat us, which previously would have been a given. Something was definitely wrong, just as it is for everyone with ALS.
				That&rsquo;s why the work to find a cure continues.
				Thank you, Major League Baseball, for keeping this effort front and center.

Their view: MLB designates annual Lou Gehrig Day