by Dennis Dalman
(Editor’s note: Information in the following story was derived from the ALS Association and from several Internet entries about Lou Gehrig.)
Only about 5 to 10 percent of all cases of Lou Gehrig’s disease have a genetic (familial) component, and there is a 50 percent chance an offspring can inherit the disease (See related story).
The rest of the cases are known as “sporadic ALS,” which stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It’s a neurologic disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, and the victims lose ability to control muscle movement, leading eventually to total paralysis and death, often in just two to five years from its onset.
About 5,600 people are diagnosed with ALS every year. That’s 15 new cases every day. As many as 33,000 Americans suffer from the disease at any given movement.
Although anybody can be afflicted with ALS, it tends to be a bit more common in war veterans and athletes, perhaps because of certain kinds of injuries.
Sixty percent of those who get ALS are men, and 95 percent are Caucasian. Most develop the disease between the ages of 40 and 70, and the average age of diagnosis is 55. Symptoms can include muscle weakness, twitching and cramping of muscles (especially in the hands and feet), thick speech and difficult in projecting the voice. Other symptoms can include tripping over things, dropping objects and abnormal fatigue in the arms and legs.
Gehrig
ALS was first noted in 1869 by a French neurologist, Jean-Martin Charcot. It wasn’t until the late 1930s that it became more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and that is because Gehrig, one of the greatest baseball players in history, was diagnosed with the disease in 1939, at the height of his career, and died in 1941 at the age of 37.
Nicknamed the “Iron Horse,” Gehrig played 17 seasons with the New York Yankees, hit 493 home runs and had 1,995 runs batted in. He was the first player in U.S. history to hit four home runs in one game, which happened during a game vs. the Philadelphia June 3, 1932.
Gehrig began suffering mysterious muscle weakness, and his baseball performance began to waver and suffer noticeably. After six days of testing at Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic, the shattering diagnosis was delivered: ALS.
In a packed stadium, July 4, 1939, Gehrig gave what quickly became known as the “Luckiest Man” speech.
“Fans,” he said via the loudspeaker, “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 17 years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.”
Stunned silence was followed by thunderous applause from thousands of fans, most of them wiping tears from their eyes.
New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia gave Gehrig a job as N.Y.C. parole commissioner, but as he became weaker and weaker, he had to give up that job. The living legend died at his home in The Bronx, N.Y.C., and the entire nation mourned his loss. His wife, Eleanor, utterly devastated, never remarried and dedicated the rest of her life to raising funds for ALS research. The couple was childless. Eleanor died in 1984, at age 84.