Whatever happened to normal looking heroes?

By Howard E Cummins

Columnist

Great American heroes have become somewhat scarce in the last years and replaced by an assortment of anti-heroes dressed for street brawls. Hollywood, in following the realm of the comic book industry, has “brought to life” a different kind of hero that is only half human. The other half can do things like shoot fire from his little finger while making love to a leading lady, and then fly and destroy cars and buildings in mere seconds. (This also includes an assortment of female super characters but I’m going to wait and mention lady heroines in a future article.)

Whatever happened to John Wayne and normal looking heroes like Lou Gehrig?

I can remember the day Lou Gehrig left us. Here was a real man, one of our greatest athletes, who was a hero on the playing field of both baseball and life. We knew when he became sick and how he left the playing field of a disease that eventually carried his name “The Lou Gehrig’s Disease” a form of spine paralysis that ended his career. The disease that took his life is a name given to the awful sickness that he fought until he died.

Even those who do not follow baseball statistics will have some awareness of this member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. As a first base player with the New York Yankees from 1923-39 he amassed an amazing record and was such a consistently good hitter that he was nicknamed “The Iron Horse”. One of his most remarkable records would be that he played 2,130 consecutive games, which remained unbroken for 56 years. You can imagine the shock to his fans when he asked to be removed from the lineup in 1939 because of inconsistent performance issues.

Lou’s undiagnosed sickness was taking over his ability to give his fans the best that he was capable of doing. Finally, at the urging of his wife Eleanor, he checked into the Mayo Clinic and was evaluated by the eminent Dr. Harold C. Harbeing. It was Harbeing who made the diagnosis and released the following statement: “This is to certify that Mr. Lou Gehrig has been under examination and diagnosed as having suffered amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a chronic poliomyelitis infantile paralysis.”
At the age of 36 Gehrig was told that he would never play baseball again, and that he was suffering from an incurable disease. It would take his life in matter of months.

On July 4, 1939 in a packed Yankee Stadium, he spoke to the crowd and uttered these famous words: “Fans, for the past two weeks, you’ve been reading about a bad break. Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

He never thought of himself as great, but the American public thought differently. In 1969 he was voted the greatest first baseman of all time by the Baseball Writers Association of America. And every year The Lou Gehrig Memorial Award is presented by the Major League Baseball Association to the player who best exhibits Gehrig’s integrity and character.