Hitting A.L.S.

by
February 3, 2009

Baseball is doing right by Lou Gehrig and everyone else with the disease that bears his name:

On July 4, the 70th anniversary of Lou Gehrig’s immortal “luckiest man on the face of the earth” speech, Major League Baseball will help fight the disease that bears the name of its doomed hero.

In 15 home ballparks that day, baseball will seek to raise money and awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which currently has no cure. Major League Baseball will announce the details of this program Tuesday.

One would think that A.L.S. would have been, for lack of a better term, baseball’s “official disease” long before now, but this event is a first, and it was spurred by, of all things, a Newsweek article written by a law professor with A.L.S. last November. Better late than never, of course.


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Jason @ IIATMS
15 years ago

Does’t 70 years after the fact qualify as “proactive” for MLB?

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Bill
15 years ago

It is surprising that it’s taken this long…Kent Hrbek’s dad died of ALS very early in Hrbek’s career, so there were always ALS-focused events going on around the Twins when I was growing up, and I guess I didn’t think about the fact that it wasn’t that way around the rest of baseball. About time…

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MooseinOhio
15 years ago

Having several friends who had loved ones (wife, father) die from ALS I think this is great and hopefully the promotion of the cause will help generate monies for research and a cure.

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H
15 years ago

As a baseball fan who lost my mother to this dreaded disease, I am glad to see MLB finally come around to supporting ALS.  I will say that my hometown team, the Phillies, has been supporting ALS for many years and has raised an incredible amount of money for the local chapter of the ALS Association.

By the way, Catfish Hunter also died of ALS.

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