"For the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." – Lou Gehrig July 4, 1939
PHILADELPHIA -- One of the greatest players in Major League Baseball history was struck down nearly 70 years ago by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and ever since then the disease has been synonymous with the name of Lou Gehrig.
Major League Baseball is dedicating Monday night's Game 5 of the 105th World Series to its ongoing 4♦ALS Awareness initiative as a tribute not only to Gehrig, but also to the lifelong baseball fan who inspired MLB to make everyone aware of the disease that claimed his own life on Sunday.
Michael Goldsmith died at age 58 after battling ALS for three years. He passed away in a hospice at St. Peter's Hospital in Albany, where he had been living since early August, according to his surviving family. The cause of death was respiratory failure from ALS, which is a progressive disease that destroys the nerve cells controlling voluntary muscle movement. Read More >